By PAMELA MERCER

          MIAMI -- Miami's large Cuban-American population was bristling
          with outrage on Wednesday, a day after the Coast Guard used
          water pumps and pepper spray to turn back a boat carrying six Cubans
          who had come within 150 yards of the Miami Beach coastline.

          The incident, broadcast live on local television, was the topic of the day
          on Spanish-language radio talk shows and prompted hundreds of
          protesters to take to the streets, blocking a roadway to Miami Beach and
          a main road in the predominantly Cuban city of Hialeah.

          Local politicians and angry commentators drew parallels between the
          Government of Fidel Castro and what they said were coercive tactics
          used by the United States Government through the Coast Guard.

          "Today, the Statue of Liberty falls with her arms open wide," declared
          Ninoska Perez, a commentator on WQBA radio and a member of the
          Cuban American National Foundation, the powerful lobbying
          organization.

          El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language newspaper, printed a headline on
          page 1 that read, "Insult to Human Dignity."

          In a letter to President Clinton, Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart,
          Republican of Florida, wrote, "There is no room in this great nation for a
          policy of such savage and brutal treatment of refugees whose only crime
          is the pursuit of freedom."

          A Coast Guard spokesman, Jibran Soto, said that the conduct of its
          officers in the incident was under investigation and that pepper spray was
          not normally used against a person in the water.

          Some protesters directed their ire at the Immigration and Naturalization
          Service. A crowd of protesters picketed today outside the Krome
          detention center in west Miami, where the six men were being held.

          At issue in Tuesday's incident is an agreement between the United States
          and Cuba, signed in 1994, under which Cubans intercepted by the Coast
          Guard at sea are turned back no matter how close they are to shore,
          while those who make it ashore and turn themselves in can be released
          on parole for a year and a day and then issued a green card, a privilege
          granted only to Cubans.

          Soto said the six Cubans, all men, were spotted by a Coast Guard
          airplane on Tuesday afternoon about 400 yards from shore. Four Coast
          Guard vessels surrounded them, urging the Cubans to turn themselves in,
          the Coast Guard said. The Cubans jumped off the boat and tried to swim
          the rest of the way. One, Carlos Hernández Cordoba, 29, said later that
          he had threatened to commit suicide by getting stuck in the propellers of
          the Coast Guard boats unless they allowed him to swim to shore.
          Hernández and Israel Ramos Consuegra, 18, managed to make it
          ashore.

          Daniel Kane, a spokesman for the immigration service in Washington,
          said the six cases would be reviewed separately. Officials are also
          investigating whether the men were brought from Cuba by smugglers.

          To many people here, the incident is an unfortunate chapter in an
          immigration policy that, in trying to stave off an exodus from the island
          while seeking to grant leniency to Cubans fleeing an enemy regime, has
          led to erratic law enforcement.

          Although Kane said the agency had no plans to review its immigration
          policy on Cubans, Dario Moreno, a professor of political science at
          Florida International University, said a review might be inevitable.
          Coming at the start of a Presidential campaign, Professor Moreno said,
          the incident could force Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W.
          Bush of Texas, who have both tried to reach out to Hispanic groups, to
          address the issue in Florida.

          Others said the incident was less about immigration policy than about the
          political influence of Cuban-Americans in South Florida.

          "The outcry is a function of the power of Cuban-American politicians in
          South Florida and the spectacle of seeing the incident live," said David
          Abraham, a professor of immigration law at the University of Miami.
          "The Cubans know that they enjoy a privileged situation and they seek to
          exploit that privilege by smuggling" themselves in.