By HELGA SILVA

A Miamian jailed 27 months for the attempted kidnapping of a Cuban diplomat Monday awaited deportation from Mexico back to Miami, a free man.

Gaspar Jimenez, 47, was transferred Sunday from the Chetumal prison in the state of Quintana Roo. A U.S citizen, he was in custody Monday in Mexico City awaiting deportation proceedings.

His wife, Carmen Jimenez, is now in Mexico working on his release, a family member who refused to be identified said Monday.

"He is still detained in jail, we don't know when he will arrive," the woman said in a telephone interview.

Jimenez is the second man convicted in the 1976 attempted kidnapping of the Cuban consul in Merida, Mexico, to be freed in the last five months. Gustavo Castillo was released and deported to Miami last December.

A third man, Orestes Ruiz, was sentenced to 32 years for fatally shooting the diplomat's bodyguard during the kidnaping attempt. Ruiz remains in jail.

A U.S. Justice Department memorandum once asserted that both Jimenez and Castillo "have extensive backgrounds in terrorist activities, primarily carried out abroad." An FBI report titled "Survey of Anti-Castro Cuban Terrorist Activities in the United States" lists both as principal figures.

Jimenez's nine-year prison sentence was reduced, and he was given additional credit for work time and the three years he served in a U.S. prison awaiting extradition.

"He left Sunday after the papers were cleared," said Armando Reyes, the duty officer in charge of the Chetumal prison.

When Castillo arrived in Miami last December, he was given a hero's welcome by the local Cuban exile community.

The conviction of Jimenez and Castillo stemmed from a violent period in the mid '70s when Miami-based Cuban exiles launched a series of attacks on Castro government officials abroad.

Attempts were made to kidnap Cuban diplomats throughout Latin America. A month after the Merida incident, two Cuban embassy officials in Argentina were kidnapped. In September 1976, violence reached a peak when a Cubana Airline plane was blown up, killing 73 passengers.

Jimenez and Ruiz were arrested after the July 1976 incident in Mexico. Castillo avoided arrest and returned to Miami.

The Mexican government charged that the exiles were going to offer to exchange the consul for political prisoners in Cuba.

Eight months later, in March 1977, Jimenez managed to escape from a Mexican jail and made his way to Miami.

In January 1978, both Castillo and Jimenez were arrested in Miami. They were extradited to Mexico in February and April 1981.

A Mexican court found their guilty of the attempted kidnapping of Cuban consul Daniel Ferrer in July 1976. The consul's bodyguard, Artagnan Diaz, was killed during the attempt.

Last month, a Herald investigation disclosed that Castillo and Jimenez were key suspects in the 1976 bombing attack on former WQBA Radio News Director Emilio Milian.

A secret eyewitness, who passed ten polygraph tests, said he saw Jimenez working under Milian's car within one hour of the bombing.

Despite a lengthy investigation that continued while Jimenez was in custody in Miami, no one was ever charged in the Milian case. Castillo and Jimenez have both denied any involvement in that bombing.