Stream of Exiles Returning to Nicaragua Slows : Miami: Many emigres went home with high hopes after the Chamorro regime was elected. But confidence is fading in the face of growing turmoil.

On one glorious night last February the streets of what is called Little Managua exploded in blue and white flags, the music of guitars and marimbas, and euphoric Nicaraguan exiles. The Himno Nacional was sung more than once that Monday night, and every other person, it seemed, vowed to be back in the other Managua, the one 1,000 miles south of here, come summer.

In the almost eight months since that fiesta celebrating the dramatic election victory of a centrist coalition headed by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, many Nicaraguans have returned to their homeland.

Last spring, according to some estimates, exiles were leaving Miami at the rate of 1,000 a month. Some flew home, while others packed the family car and drove a tortuous route across country, through Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador.

“Those people had a lot of confidence in the new political situation,” said community leader and banker Jose Antonio Alvarado. “But I said at the time that I wouldn’t be surprised if some who go came back.”

Some have. So have many others who made exploratory trips. And the confidence of last February has faded in the face of a harsh reality.

In Nicaragua, inflation is running at an annual rate of 3,000%. Housing is scarce, and so are jobs. Recently, deadly skirmishes between Sandinista soldiers and remnants of Contra forces have been reported. And perhaps most important, even those Nicaraguans in Miami who like President Chamorro doubt that she is in control.

The steady stream of exiles departing Miami has slowed to a trickle. “I hear every day from people who say they are going back,” said Emelina Tellez, who with her husband, Cesar, runs La Fritanga, a popular takeout cafe in a shopping center in Sweetwater, where February’s party erupted. “But it’s wishful thinking. They want to go home, but they are afraid.

“Still,” she adds, looking around the restaurant at pictures of the land she left 11 years ago, “hope is the last thing to die.”

Lately, new uncertainties have buffeted Miami’s Nicaraguan community, which, with an estimated population of 150,000, is the largest in the United States. With the change to a democratically elected government in Managua, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has decided to review and possibly revoke asylum status granted to more than 8,000 Nicaraguans over the last two years. The pending claims of another 40,000 Nicaraguans, here as well as in other sizable exile communities in Los Angeles and Texas, could also be affected.

“People are terribly scared because of this,” said Carmen Lacayo, who helps run La Hermanidad, a social service center that provides food to low-income families, chiefly Nicaraguan. “We are seeing people now that we helped get on their feet four and five years ago. Now they’re back because their work permits expire and they are losing their jobs.”

INS Commissioner Gene McNary has admitted that his agency is so backlogged that no one could be deported for years. And President Chamorro three weeks ago traveled to Washington to plead for a three-year extension of exiles’ residency visas, adding in a Miami stopover that Nicaragua was not prepared to receive thousands of returning compatriots anyway. Nonetheless, the alarm felt by thousands of Miami Nicaraguans is real.

“I like Mrs. Chamorro; she’s a friend of mine,” says Carmen Lacayo. “But she’s not governing. The Sandinistas are still in power, and that is why people left in the first place.”

Nicaraguans first began to pour into this city of exiles in 1979, after the revolutionary overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza. Many of those early arrivals were prosperous members of the middle class or members of Somoza’s notorious National Guard. Welcomed by the large Cuban exile community as refugees from the Marxist Sandinista rule, most settled in easily.

Through the 1980s more and more Nicaraguans came north. Many of these newcomers had less education and fewer job skills. They were laborers, or defecting Sandinista soldiers, or, more recently, campesinos or farm workers who had taken up arms as part of the U.S.-backed Contras. While living less well than those who had preceded them to Miami, these Nicaraguans, too, found homes, went to work and marveled as their children learned English.

Now, whatever their economic status, most Nicaraguans know they are better off here than they would be at home.

“I have seven brothers and four sisters here now,” said Jorge Sarabia, a 43-year-old air conditioner repairman. “After the election, everybody was happy. But I’m not interested in going to Nicaragua even for a vacation.”

Still, despite concerns, some exiles are returning to Nicaragua, and in most cases, they are the people who after the revolution had the most to lose--the well-to-do middle and upper class. They also can afford to hedge their bets on relocation. “We’re moving one or two families a week, and most are keeping their houses in Miami,” said Ada Gutierrez, who with her husband, Octavio, runs a cargo shipping business.

Mario Rappaccioli is typical. Thirty years old and a graduate of Georgia Tech, Rappaccioli is from a prominent Nicaraguan family; his father and namesake is a former Conservative Party leader who remained in Nicaragua throughout the Sandinista rule.

This month the younger Rappaccioli quit his $60,000-a-year job as a financial analyst to move back to Managua and join his father in the family’s agricultural chemical import business. The motive, he says, is part economic and part patriotism.

“I have to take the risk,” he says, “because number one, I am from Nicaragua and I believe I belong there; and two, I have something to contribute to rebuilding the country.”

With his luxurious Key Biscayne house up for rent, Rappaccioli has crated up all his belongings--including stove, refrigerator, washer and dryer and late-model Honda--and left. The cost of the move: $10,000. His wife, Ana Maria, and his two young children will join him after the first of the year, he says.

“Of course, I wonder if I’m making the right decision,” said Rappaccioli on the eve of departure, “especially with the strikes and campaigns of civil disobedience. But I’m optimistic. There has been a peaceful transition. I think the hard part is done. Now it’s time to prove to the Sandinistas that private enterprise works better than a state-run economy.”

Eight months ago, many entrepreneurs saw in Nicaragua the promise of capitalism. “A lot of people went down there with enthusiasm, thinking it was the land of opportunity,” said Alvaro Castillo, president of the Nicaraguan-American Bankers Assn. “But with the devaluation of the cordoba and production at low levels, they’re coming back disappointed.”

Of the few doctors and lawyers who have returned to Nicaragua, most were those who were not certified to practice in Florida, according to Mario Bonilla, a psychiatrist who heads the Nicaraguan Medical Assn. in Exile.

“To me, it’s a dream to return to Nicaragua, but only when we have guarantees of freedom and democracy,” said Bonilla, who is studying to obtain a U.S. license.

Several Miami realtors, including Century 21, have opened Managua offices and in some Miami neighborhoods flyers now circulate offering Nicaraguan properties for sale. But there have been few sales, according to agent Frederico Barker.

Ada and Octavio Gutierrez, too, have opened a Managua office of the company they started here, General Cargo Services. With the trade embargo between the two countries lifted, they expect business to gradually build.

But the Gutierrezes themselves, with children in school and about to become U.S. citizens, will remain in Miami. “Our future,” Ada Gutierrez says, “is here.”