MEDIA : Miami Radio Castro-Bashing Is Cooling Off : Spanish-language stations reflect new tone by airing opinions of those advocating dialogue with Cuban regime.

On any one of a half-dozen Spanish-language radio stations here, today’s topic of discussion is Fidel Castro. The Cuban leader was the chief topic yesterday, and he will be the focus on tomorrow’s call-in shows, too.

For more than a generation, about the only thing more certain than Fidel as the exile community’s favorite topic is the South Florida summer weather. And both remain hot.

So rancorous, so strident, so passionately anti-Castro is Cuban exile radio that a 1992 Americas Watch report accused the Spanish-language stations here of “unquestionably contribut(ing) to a more repressive climate for freedom of expression.” Calling someone a “traitor,” “Communist” or “Castro agent” on the air often has targeted that person for a death threat, a physical assault or a bomb. After 35 years of Castro’s rule, offering even faint praise of him is still a good way to get a punch in the mouth, minimum, in Miami.

But a cool breeze of moderation has been detected on the airwaves here recently, a change that reflects a larger current among the 1.2 million Cubans across the United States. Those who espouse dialogue with the Cuban government now can be heard daily on radio, a wider range of opinions is being invited, and no terrorist bombings have been reported here for months.

Ironically, one of the clearest signs of the shifting political landscape is a nasty public feud between two of Miami’s best-known broadcasters, Tomas Garcia Fuste and Armando Perez Roura--each with impeccable hard-line credentials. Former colleagues both in Havana of the 1950s and in Miami, they now work for rival stations, commanding huge followings among exiles who can’t get enough Castro-bashing.

Now they are slinging invective at each other. When Perez Roura, who hosts a daily talk show on WAQI-Radio Mambi, made a veiled criticism of Fuste on the air, Fuste, news director of WCMQ, fired back with a scathing editorial in which he called his rival “an oracle of hate” and accused him of inciting retribution against recent arrivals from Cuba for not fleeing the island sooner.

Perez Roura, in turn, charged Fuste with trying to stir up controversy only to win ratings points. “His words are not important,” Perez Roura says. “(His attack) is stupidity.”

Underlying the split between the two deans of Cuban radio are differences in style as well as in strategy of how best to oppose Castro. The 66-year-old Perez Roura, always a more strident on-air personality, has regularly urged listeners to take to the streets to confront those he thinks are insufficiently hard-line. At one such demonstration last year, a small riot broke out and 16 people were arrested.

Fuste, 63, is no leftist. But he does admit to an increased willingness to air divergent opinions, beginning last spring after he jumped from powerful WQBA--called La Cubanisma, or most Cuban--and signed with rival WCMQ for a salary of $200,000 a year and more autonomy. He recently has opened his studio to guests such as liberal businessman Francisco Aruca, who frequently travels to Havana, favors lifting the embargo against Cuba and hosts his own talk show--which he pays for--on a station called Radio Progreso.

Last month, Fuste shocked some fans when in an address to a conservative exile group, Junta Patriotica Cubana, he not only defended his willingness to share air time with liberal Cuban Americans, but said that in a democratic, post-Castro Cuba, even communists and Fidelistas might have a role.

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“I said I was sorry to have to tell you this,” Fuste recalled. “I said, ‘I know some of you don’t like to hear this. But if we want democracy and freedom of the press in Cuba, we have to respect the rights of others n”

For those who have long considered much of exile radio a litany of diatribe and hatred, the trend toward moderation is welcome. “There does seem to be a greater interest in fairness and balance,” says Mark B. Rosenberg, a Florida International University dean and former director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center.

“Anti-Fidelismo is big business,” Rosenberg adds. “And there is a great ideological passion here. But there is a boundary between journalistic ethics and business, and some broadcasters seem to be learning what it is.”