``Chuchu saw the balloon at 11:45 p.m. at approximately four kilometers from the malecon. He was standing on the balcony of his apartment on Humboldt street.''

Oh, can't you just imagine old Chuchu there, perched on a terrace in Havana on a regular, humid Sunday night? He peers toward the waves crashing against the seawall, then lifts his eyes in search of the moon.

But that's no moon up there in the inky stillness over Cuba. It's a huge, white balloon hovering 100 feet over the sea. This strange mini-blimp, Chuchu finds out later, is emblazoned with the word ``Democracia,'' democracy, and tethered to a remote-controlled inflatable raft.

It was a kind of phantom vessel. It carried no captain, no human navigator, only an automated directional device, a Global Positioning Satellite system. It carried no weapons or explosives, only things like diapers, baby bottles, toothpaste, toothbrushes, bath soap, pencils, Democracia T-shirts. It slipped into Cuba seemingly undetected by the border patrol, but spotted by at least one particular citizen, Chuchu of Humboldt street.

Ah, sighed Rojas, mission accomplished. News of the phantom raft that washed up along a Havana beach Monday earned him and his Democracia comrades giddy raves on the street.

Dispatching a raft as a message of people-to-people solidarity was a new tactic for the group best known for its flotillas across the Florida Straits. It was a symbolic lifeboat launched in response to a collective SOS from the Cuban people.

And it was a display of exile activism with a twist -- and, if you will, a sense of humor.

Imagine the Cuban coast bristling with gunboats and trigger-happy guards, the Cuban military machine forever keeping the people on red alert, pumping the paranoia at civilian militia camps, keeping alive the belief that Cuba is chronically under siege from its enemies to the north. Now imagine this ``enemy'' edging to shore tugging a striped circus balloon and bearing Pampers.

Unlike on the Granma, Fidel Castro's leaky yacht that landed his troops in the eastern Gulf of Guacanayabo in 1956, this vessel carried no weapons or intentions of killing.

``I see it as a romantic, amusing thing, a kind of mockery of the Cuban Coast Guard and the myth that Castro is invincible,'' says Rojas, who got confirmation of the raft's landing when he called foreign journalists in Havana Monday. Yes, they told him, there was a raft with a huge red and white balloon spotted from a coastal highway, guarded by a squadron of state security agents.

Who got the diapers and soap? Who knows.

The point is this: Who got the message?

It was just as much a message for Havana as it was for Miami: There, without launching a single grenade, without stepping foot upon Cuban soil, exile activists managed to get past security, make a splash, make the news wires. It remains to be seen if the action -- even if it didn't involve human presence -- constitutes a violation of U.S. laws. But one thing is certain: The mission harmed no one.

``We are not a violent organization,'' Rojas says. ``We do not approve of violence. The human cost is too high.''

As refugee-laden rafts leave Cuba by the dozen, a phantom raft took the opposite route and landed in Havana. The message on its balloon reflects the yearnings of all those departing rafts: Democracia.