"We can't wait for the Cuban government to fall to start looking at the market," Pablo Carreno, elderly scion of an exiled sugar family, told an annual gathering of the country's former cattlemen and sugar barons.

Few of the 1.3 million Cuban-Americans banked as much as these men on the popular exile slogan: En los noventa, Fidel revienta! "In the nineties, Fidel will explode!" But with the '90s gone, time is running out on the colonos who lost plantations and on other older Cubans who fled the 1959 socialist revolution.

Increasingly, it's a younger generation with little or no memory of Cuba keeping a deathwatch over the Castro regime. Thanks to the hard work of immigrant parents, Cuban-American baby boomers have the education, know-how and money to help modernize a decaying Cuba. But as eyewitnesses to their parents' anguish, many tread lightly on the subject.

"I hope we're more careful and mature," says Carlos Saladrigas, 52, a prominent Miami businessman. "I'm even careful about the term 'reconstruction,' because it implies we want a return to what was there before. In a historical and practical sense, that's not possible."

Younger members of the exile community burn to return to Cuba, even if they've seen it only through their parents' eyes. It is "a sacred, moral responsibility," Saladrigas says.

Professionals and entrepreneurs have the financial clout to carry out such duty. A fifth of Cuban-American households earn more than $75,000 a year, the largest percentage among Hispanic-Americans. Cuban-Americans own 138 of the USA's 500 biggest Hispanic-owned companies, although they are just 3.4% of the Hispanic population, says Hispanic Business magazine.

With Castro dead or deposed, "there won't be enough flights, enough hotels, enough anything in Cuba to accommodate us all," Sergio Pino says.

Pino, 44, a South Florida home builder, has formed an investor group and hopes to raise $50 million for his return to the country he left at age 12. By building apartments and townhouses for Cubans, he says, he can ease the severe housing shortage that has resulted in four and five families inhabiting what were single-family houses before the revolution.

Other midcareer Cuban-Americans say they share a commitment to help a free Cuba, but most sound more patient and less passionate than Pino.

"It's difficult to make short-term plans," says Armando Guerra, an executive at the family-owned Sedano's supermarket and drugstore chain in Florida. "Other than getting your finances in place, there's not much you can do."

Peter Suarez sees a role for his family's Miami-based farm-equipment company. "Sure, we'll be there," Suarez, 36, says. "I've been raised around it, raised in a town where it's always in your face, but I can't say I have the same passion about it my father has."

One reason for the wariness is Castro's ability to survive crisis after crisis. Another is last year's Elian Gonzalez episode. The battle over the 6-year-old left many Cuban-Americans feeling they had been portrayed as arrogant extremists. "We didn't realize where we stood in respect to the rest of the country," says Oscar Abello, a Miami shipping consultant.

Indeed, for the first time, Cuban-Americans recognized they were outside mainstream U.S. public opinion. The painful experience forced exile groups to reassess their image and soften the tone if not the substance of their campaign to isolate Castro.

For Abello, 61, that means exercising caution when talking about Cuba's future. He acknowledges studying the feasibility of running passenger ferries between Florida ports and Havana one day. But he quickly adds: "I have no plans. It's too presumptuous."

Presumptuousness has burned Cuban-Americans before, namely after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gleeful exile groups cranked out studies that showed Castro would topple without Soviet subsidies. "Change in Cuba is imminent," predicted a 1993 report by the Cuban American National Foundation, which prepared a confidential guide to the island's economy.

Such talk was a boon to Castro, who called the exiles "worms" and opportunists. "Fidel said, 'Look at these guys. They want to take your houses,' " says Joe Garcia, executive director of the CANF. "We don't want their houses. The poorest guy in Miami lives better than much of the power elite in Havana."

Garcia says exiles whose property was seized by the regime should get compensation when Cuba finally turns its back on communism. "But these guys who want to talk about getting property back, it's absurd."

At 74, Castro has not exploded. His economy is a creaking museum piece that nearly fell apart with the loss of $4 billion to $6 billion in annual Soviet subsidies. Illinois, which has roughly the same population, generates 23 times the island's economic output today.

The loss of Soviet aid forced Castro to dollarize much of his economy and open the door to limited foreign investment. Still, Cuba is losing ground to Third World countries it once aided, because they have done what he refuses to do: use cheap labor to draw outside investment, manufacturing jobs and technology.

Cuban unemployment hovers near 20%, and many on the island don't get enough to eat. The sugar industry is in a slump. Tourism, a prime source of hard currency, has flattened out because Cuba gets little repeat business from Europeans and Canadians turned off by high prices and lack of amenities.

But Castro has been astonishingly resilient. Energy shortages left the country facing partial blackouts on 344 days in 1994. New and refurbished power plants built with outside investment cut the number to 20 days last year, says Jason Feer, publisher of CubaNews, a monthly newsletter.

Cuban-Americans have underestimated Castro and bet everything on the idea that he is the sole obstacle to a democratic transition, Feer says. "They assume a successor government is going to be pro-market, pro-investment, pro-exile and pro-U.S.," he says. "The most likely scenario is you'll see communists remain in power for a certain period after Castro. That regime may be more favorable to warming up to the U.S., but it's still going to be a problematic relationship."

Cuban-American baby boomers say they accept the notion that Cuba's transition might not happen overnight. Many insist they have no interest in compensation or claims for old family property. And some are prepared to find that their investment and help might not initially be welcome once Castro is gone.

Those feelings aside, CANF says it's time to start planning again for a post-Castro Cuba. The organization is getting ready to commission the first update of its 1992 study of the island's economic needs.

One reason for the update is that Cuban-American business people often know less about conditions in Cuba than other interested Americans. Last year alone, 3,400 representatives from 2,500 U.S. firms traveled to Cuba, estimates John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. As a result, companies such as Archer Daniels Midland have troves of information about the country and contacts in the Cuban leadership.

Exiles can travel to Cuba to visit family members, but few will admit to making business reconnaissance trips. "I don't think I know a lot about Cuba these days," Abello says. "And I don't think other people in Miami know much, either."

Unlike younger Cuban-Americans, the old sugar mill owners and ranchers talk as if they can still smell cane fields and see their pastures. It's important not to offend them and not to be bound by the sepia-toned Cuba they are nostalgic for, Saladrigas says. "If we think the future of Cuba is sugar, Cuba's in real trouble. I'd rather have it be knowledge-based, services and technology," he says. "What's missing for us is a sense of reality about (what) it is to be in Cuba today. The exiles from the '60s have never been back. They have a view of things that's not subject to a reality check."