In Sugar Land, a suburban Texas town that traces its origin to a load of sugar cane brought from the Spanish colony of Cuba in the 19th Century, Ruben Dario Rumbaut found his ideal refuge in America.

``This is la tierra del azúcar, the land of sugar, and this means a lot to Cubans,'' said Rumbaut, a retired psychiatrist who has lived in the U.S. Southwest since he fled Fidel Castro's revolution in 1960.

The patriarch of a large family now scattered across the United States, Rumbaut is part of a tight-knit community of more than 8,000 Cuban exiles lured to the Houston area in the 1960s and '70s by jobs in medicine, education, oil and banking.

South Florida may be home to 600,000 Cubans, the largest Cuban community outside the island, but after 40 years of exile, the Cuban diaspora extends all over the United States -- and to some of the unlikeliest spots around the world.

Australia. Sweden. Russia. Some will tell you this is a true story: There's a Cuban refugee in Cairo who makes a living giving camel rides to tourists. His story has traveled in Cuban circles all over Europe and back to Miami and Havana.

``I was in Munich with my wife when we came upon a group at a park singing and dancing to La Guantanamera,'' said Rumbaut, who also has heard the camel story. ``And on an excursion, we were taken to a Cuban club named Babalu. I have found Cubans in the most unexpected places. We are scattered all over.''

A European presence

In Europe, the largest Cuban community is in Spain, where many Cubans who had strong ties to the motherland fled during the first tumultuous years after Castro seized power. And there's the literary exile of Paris, with its old and new cast of Cuban writers, painters, dramatists -- a low-key community now frequently in the news thanks to the success of Cuban writer Zoe Valdes, who moved to Paris in 1994.

``People think it's very glamorous to live here, but we are very misunderstood in Europe,'' said Valdes, who often appears in public forums to talk about human rights abuses in Cuba.

Among the more recent exiles in Europe are los gusanos rojos -- the red worms -- the nickname for young Cubans who were studying in Moscow in the early days of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), and never returned to Cuba. In the chaos as the Soviet bloc broke up in 1989, many escaped to Sweden, where the Cuban community is now estimated to number 1,000. Others found refuge in a united Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A number of them found their way to Spain and have become part of a Cuban community that officials estimate at more than 10,000, although Cuban activists believe it is three times as large.

``The earliest waves of exiles had very close ties to Spain and were either Spaniards by birth or the children of Spaniards,'' said writer Carlos Alberto Montaner, who has lived in Madrid since the 1960s. ``Now there are Cubans from all walks of life here. There used to be only one Cuban restaurant in Madrid, and now there are about six. There are literary magazines and many successful musicians. There's even a Cuban bordello in Barcelona.''

Miami is focal point

To many of these exiles scattered around the country and the world, Miami is like a second homeland, a place to visit in lieu of Cuba.

No place has been more marked by four decades of Cuban immigration than South Florida -- the official waiting room of exile, where Cubans dream, wait and plot the end of Castro's rule. Each exile wave -- the Freedom Flights of the late 1960s and early '70s, the Mariel boatlift of 1980, the rafters of the '90s -- injected the region with a new dose of Cubanness and renewed the painful cycle of separation, exile and family reunification.

``In Miami, you sweat and suffer more intensely the passions of the Cuban problem,'' said Roberto Fontanillas Roig, exiled in Venezuela for almost 38 years.

Venezuela is another traditional exile outpost experiencing a constant flow of Cuban refugees.

``Our exile here began with a stampede in the early '60s when Venezuela was one of the countries that gave Cubans political refuge,'' said Fontanillas, who is director of the Cuban Venezuelan Democratic Foundation, which holds forums on Cuba and sponsors cultural activities. ``Now you could say that there are several Cuban communities -- even one made up of immigrants who are here primarily for economic reasons.''

Bitterness in Peru

In Peru, where about 1,600 Cubans have settled, some live in bitter exile.

Ignacio Ramirez was one of nearly 10,000 Cubans who took refuge in the Peruvian Embassy in Havana in April 1980, demanding political asylum and permission to leave the island. But unlike others who made it to Florida on the Mariel boatlift, Ramirez never did. He ended up in Lima as part of a group of nearly 1,000 Cubans granted refugee status by the Peruvian government.

Ramirez, who works at odd jobs such as selling fried banana chips on Lima beaches in the summer, said he doesn't like living in the Andean nation.

``When we first arrived here, I thought it would be only for a short time and then we would be allowed to go to Florida like the rest. We were tricked,'' said Ramirez, who lives in the downtown Lima neighborhood of Barrios Altos, where many Cuban refugees settled.

Another group of about 175 were given homes in a United Nations-built compound on the southern outskirts of the city. And more than 600 other Cubans who have migrated to the country over the past few years, according to Peruvian government statistics, are happier and have made their mark in everything from theater to sports and cuisine.

Michael Garcia, a young actor, went to Peru two years ago to try his luck in television after he met Peruvians in Cuba who said he could easily get work there. He has landed work as a model and dancer, forming part of the cast of Peru's most famous TV shows.

``The situation in Cuba is very bad -- you can't get any work,'' Garcia said. ``Nothing will change until the dictatorship ends.''

Across the Pacific Ocean

Even distant Australia has a Cuban exile colony.

Many of the estimated 200 Cubans living mostly in Sydney and Melbourne moved to Australia in the late 1960s and early '70s after a long voyage that took them first to Spain. The exiles had planned to travel to the United States, but after U.S. visas became difficult to obtain and jobs in Spain became scarce, they accepted generous offers from the Australian government to resettle there.

The Australians paid the Cubans' air fare, found them jobs and offered them free medical care and education, a 38-hour work week, subsidized housing, a guaranteed month's vacation and many holidays.

Other Cubans, and some Cuban Americans, have found their way to Australia through the twists and turns of life.

``Australians have an expression for when the tide has come in and taken everything away and left only one thing behind,'' said writer Olga Lorenzo, who lived in Hialeah until she went away to college, met an Australian, married and moved to Melbourne. ``They say, `He left me washed up like a shag on a rock.' I don't know what the shag is, but I feel like some bit of debris left washed up over here on this far shore.''

Two years ago, Lorenzo published in Australia the novel The Rooms in My Mother's House, an exile family's saga that links the Cuban worlds she has known -- Miami, Havana and her own little slice of Australia.

To keep each other informed, the Australian Cubans publish a newsletter named Mambi after the insurgents of Cuba's war of independence. But there's not much news about Australians in it.

It is all about Cuba, the United States and especially Miami.

Traditions, culture survive

In the United States -- where 1.25 million Cubans live, according to a 1997 Census estimate -- exiles have transplanted their traditions and culture.

In Houston, an area better known for its Mexican heritage than its slender ties to Cuba, exiles raised money to place a bust of patriot Jose Marti in the city's central park. Several cultural clubs have been established, and tertulias, informal gatherings to discuss all things Cuban, take place monthly. Cubans in the news elsewhere are invited to make presentations. And every year, on the feast day of Our Lady of Charity, Cubans organize a special Mass in the cathedral.

Similar cultural events take place all over the country -- staged by Cubans yearning for their roots.

``I take my two daughters twice a week to rehearse in a comparsa [Cuban line dance] 45 miles away from home so they can also maintain our culture,'' said Nilo Lipiz, a Cuban exile who has lived in Southern California for 30 years.

Lipiz, one of eight Cuban administrators and professors who work for the Rancho Santiago Community College District in Orange County, gets together with other Cubans at least once a month.

``It is interesting that although we are [almost] fully assimilated to the mainstream majority, we perceive ourselves as different,'' Lipiz said. ``People cannot tell who we are by our looks, but they might be able to tell by how we interact with each other . . . hablando Cuban Spanglish and carrying on four or more loud conversations at once!''

Miami-New York ties

In the New York-New Jersey area, home to 155,000 Cubans -- the second-largest Cuban community in the United States -- virtually every Cuban exile group based in Miami has an outpost or representatives, from the influential Cuban American National Foundation to the militant Alpha 66, to the Bay of Pigs veterans association, Brigade 2506.

But mostly, the Cubans in the Northeast are spread out in big and small communities, and they circulate among groups of friends.

``People are more integrated into the mainstream, but without a doubt we can't help walking in some place and hearing someone speak a Spanish that's different from anyone else's and say, `Hey, they're Cuban,' '' said Raul Arrazcaeta, a Cuban-American investment banker on Wall Street. ``You bond more quickly.''

Many of the Cubans living abroad and in other parts of the United States visit Miami as often as they can.

``My whole family goes to Miami several times a year,'' said Maria Cristina Garcia, a professor of history at Texas A&M University who as an exile child grew up in the Bahamas, Miami and Puerto Rico before the family settled in Texas. ``My mother calls it La Meca [The Mecca]. If you can't go to Cuba, you go to Miami.''

Fontanillas, who lives in Venezuela and has an apartment in Key Biscayne, visits his mother in Coral Gables every six weeks or so. He also spends the Christmas holidays here with his Venezuelan wife. Montaner has an apartment and a business office on Brickell Avenue and shuttles across the Atlantic between Miami and Madrid as if he were just traveling across the state.

A family gathering

Last year, the large Rumbaut family, which also has a Miami branch, had a bittersweet family reunion in South Florida.

After Ruben Rumbaut's wife, Carmita, died of cancer, the entire Rumbaut clan flew to Miami for a special farewell tribute.

The children, spouses and grandchildren came from Texas, Michigan and Washington, D.C. Together with relatives and friends from Miami, they rented a bus and drove to Key West in a small caravan. They ate lunch in a Cuban restaurant, then set sail in a boat for the Florida Straits.

They could not take Carmita's ashes to Cuba, as would have been her wish, but that July afternoon -- on the 37th anniversary of the Rumbauts' arrival in the United States -- the family sailed as close to Cuba as they could.

Then, Ruben Rumbaut took the ashes of his beloved wife and scattered them in the turquoise sea separating Cuba and Florida.

``At that moment, seven dolphins jumped from the sea,'' Rumbaut said, his voice breaking with emotion. ``It was a beautiful afternoon of many colors.''

Herald special correspondent Lucien O. Chauvin in Lima contributed to this report.