By ANDRES VIGLUCCI, ELAINE DE VALLE and MARIA A. MORALES
Herald Staff Writers

In a dramatic cat-and-mouse game that played out over live television and enraged Cuban exiles, six rafters dove off a tiny skiff just yards off the Surfside beach Tuesday and frantically tried to out-swim U.S. Coast Guard and police patrol boats that blocked their path to shore -- and freedom.

No sooner had the midafternoon operation ended -- with two men having made it to shore and four others held offshore for possible repatriation -- than vociferous demonstrations erupted in Surfside and at the entrance to the Miami Beach Coast Guard station. The crowd there grew to 1,000 protesters and forced authorities to shut down the MacArthur Causeway for several hours.

Other impromptu protests broke out in Marathon and in other areas of Miami-Dade, tying up traffic and sending police scrambling to contain them.

In a sharp deviation from normal practice, federal officials agreed late Tuesday under public pressure here and in Washington to bring ashore the four detained at sea and turn them over to immigration authorities, a move that suggests the men will be allowed to stay in the country. The Coast Guard also promised an internal investigation.

Earlier in the day, critics ranging from exile and human-rights activists to Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas and Miami Mayor Joe Carollo lashed out at what they said appeared to be overly aggressive tactics by the Coast Guard.

For more than an hour, tens of thousands of South Floridians watched on TV as Coast Guard crews opened up a fire hose on the rafters' boat, and, once the Cubans had scattered in the surf, moved their vessels to block the swimmers when they made a dash for the beach. One exhausted man who surrendered to a North Miami Beach police marine patrol was handcuffed after climbing into the boat.

In one instance, a Coast Guard crewman pepper-sprayed one man who was treading water alongside an inflatable patrol vessel. Late Tuesday, agency officials acknowledged that was not ``a common or accepted practice.''

``My personal reaction is of outrage for a country that stands for human rights,'' Penelas said. ``I was shocked at what we saw.''

Policy exposed

Tuesday's operation for the first time exposed to public view the workings of a Clinton administration Cuban-refugee policy that critics have long contended draws arbitrary lines between who gets to stay and who gets sent back.

Under a strategy enacted to end the 1994 rafter crisis, Cuban rafters intercepted at sea -- even a few feet from the shoreline -- are repatriated after shipboard interviews to determine whether they would face persecution at home. The Coast Guard has repatriated more than 1,500 Cubans since 1995.

Those who make it to dry land are typically released after brief detentions and permitted to stay.

``How can liberty be separated by four or five meters from the shore?'' asked one dismayed caller to Spanish-language radio station WQBA-AM. ``Does standing on land or in two feet of water dictate whether you are free?''

Questions raised

The incident also raised anew questions over the Coast Guard's sometimes conflicting roles in enforcing immigration laws and assisting rafters and others in distress. From the evidence of television pictures, it seemed that Coast Guard crews did not throw life jackets to the flailing rafters until after they had been in the water more than 15 minutes.

``This is unlike our Coast Guard,'' Carollo said. ``They have saved tens of thousands of Cubans at sea throughout the years. Unfortunately, today was a very sad day, not only for Miami and the U.S., but for freedom. The only thing these young men wanted was their liberty.''

One Coast Guard officer, in saying that such confrontations between rafters and boat people and crews trying to stop them are not uncommon, neatly summed up the impact of Tuesday's incident:

``It just hasn't been on the television, that's all,'' Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Andy Blomme said.

Blomme said drawing a sharp line is necessary to discourage other refugees from making the same attempt. ``Every time a migrant successfully lands, it motivates another to make the dangerous and hazardous voyage.

Carollo said Coast Guard officials privately acknowledged embarrassment at their crews' handling of the rafters, in particular at the use of pepper spray against an apparently helpless swimmer.

Agency's concerns

The Coast Guard said it needs to use force sometimes to protect crew members and enforce immigration law.

``The Coast Guard has a policy of using the minimum amount of force necessary to enforce U.S. law and to keep our people safe,'' Coast Guard Lt. Ron LaBrec said. ``The Coast Guard is very concerned about the fate of people at sea, but we also have to enforce U.S. law. We'll do an investigation and we'll make the facts known as we come by them.''

LaBrec said the migrants had threatened their crews by waving nail-studded oars or boards in the air when first approached, and he insisted the agency's main concern was to save lives.

``When our boats got on the scene, they asked the vessel to stop. The migrants refused to stop. They started brandishing the oars. Some of the oars had nails on them, and were dangerous. They were resisting,'' LaBrec said.

``People are saying, `They were so close, they were so close.' But we intercepted them at sea. And we did that with as much concern for their safety and compassion as we should have. Our first role is as lifesavers.''

On Tuesday, the Coast Guard crews were clearly trying to prevent the Cubans from touching land. Just as clearly, the Cubans knew the rules of the game and were desperate to touch the sand.

One of the two men who reached shore, Carlos Hernandez Cordoba, said in an interview with The Herald that he had lived in Marathon briefly after leaving Cuba on a raft, and returned to his homeland in 1995 following the death of his mother. There he was jailed for illegally leaving the country.

Hernandez Cordoba, 29, said he and five friends from Caibarien built the small wooden boat, equipped it with a sail and made the voyage from Cuba to Florida unaided.

Smuggling suspected

But Dan Geoghegan, assistant chief with the Border Patrol in Florida, said he suspects they were smuggled across the Florida Straits, and possibly dropped off in the wooden boat from a larger vessel, a common tactic used by smugglers.

``The only purpose it serves is public empathy,'' he said. ``You don't row yourself from Cuba to Surfside. . . . If you're going to be in a small boat like that, you can't row across open ocean.''

The Coast Guard said it was notified of the refugees' approach by a passing boater. A 41-foot patrol boat intercepted the boat within sight of the shoreline. The crew called for backup when the Cubans, waving their oars, refused to voluntarily board the Coast Guard vessel, an agency spokesman said.

The men continued to paddle fruitlessly as their tiny boat was surrounded. After one Coast Guard crew sprayed them with a fire hose, the men went into the water. Coast Guard officials said the hosing was not designed to force them into the water, but ``as a signal.''

Planned to scatter

Hernandez Cordoba said they had planned to scatter in the water if intercepted near shore to make capture more difficult.

Amid shouted encouragement from a few dozen spectators who had gathered on the beach, the six men tried to swim around the patrol boats. To cheers from the crowd, Hernandez Cordoba and Israel Ramos Consuegra made it to shore, where they were promptly taken into custody. Hernandez Cordoba raised his hands in triumph as he sloshed through the surf.

He darted back and forth as Surfside police officers approached, then dove forward face-down in the sand and was immediately handcuffed. The same officers later bought the two men sandals and sandwiches and gave them T-shirts bearing the logo ``Surfside Recreation.''

``I thanked God when people on the beach said `Welcome, you're a free man now,' '' said Hernandez Cordoba. ``Unfortunately, the others weren't so lucky.''

The other four, too exhausted to dodge the patrol boats, surrendered and were taken to a Coast Guard cutter offshore. When they reached the Farallon, they were greeted by an earlier group of seven Cubans found bobbing Tuesday morning 12 miles off Port Everglades on board a small wooden boat.

Quick protests

Demonstrators who saw the incident on television and listened to angry calls on Spanish-language radio quickly gathered at the Miami Beach Coast Guard station and in front of the Surfside police station, where the two men who made it to land were taken before being brought to a U.S. Border Patrol office in Pembroke Pines.

The protesters demanded that the men on the Coast Guard cutter be released.

Another group marched across the MacArthur Causeway at rush hour, closing the road and disrupting traffic for hours. When they reached the Coast Guard station, at least a dozen jumped in the water to express solidarity with the refugees.

One of those who went in the water, Enel Puente, 32, a rafter who was let into the United States in 1995 after being detained at Guantanamo, shouted at the Coast Guard: ``Take off your uniform, you should be ashamed to wear that. Why don't you come spray in my eyes, why don't you come spray water at me?''

By 9 p.m., 1,000 people had gathered at the station. Their angry mood changed quickly, following the announcement that the four men on the cutter would be brought to shore. The demonstration became a celebration.

Said Penelas: ``It's a very real victory. They've recognized that these six Cubans were simply and nothing more than seeking freedom.''

Herald staff writers Ana Acle, Dominique Collins-Berta, Yves Colon, Frank Davies, Manny Garcia, Ivonne Perez, Carol Rosenberg and Juan O. Tamayo contributed to this report.

e-mail: aviglucci@herald.com