Mariel refugee Celso Mosquera of West Kendall wants to find the family that took him under their wing during the 1980 boatlift. He was 8 years old and made the harrowing sea voyage alone.

He hopes leads will be generated through the Mariel database unveiled Friday by The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald on their home pages and officially at Cuba Nostalgia 2010 this weekend.

For George Garcia, of New Jersey, the database will provide a record for his daughters of his departure from Cuba and his entry into exile in the United States. `` It's family history,'' he said.

Luis Hidalgo of Miami wants to see if his daughter, who was born on a boat in the middle of the Florida Straits, is included. ``She was born on an American boat, so she's an American,'' Hidalgo said

Thursday's announcement on Cuban Independence Day of the database -- a listing of the names of more than 125,000 Cubans who took part in the massive exodus from Cuba in 1980 -- led to calls and e-mails from Mariel refugees wishing to check for their name or their boat's name.

The searchable database, a five-month-long project by the newspapers, is the creation of Database Editor Rob Barry and Web developer Stephanie Rosenblatt. The two worked with reporter Luisa Yanez, who gathers the data.

The project marks the 30th anniversary of the Mariel boatlift.

To form the database, Barry and Rosenblatt worked with a massive U.S. government list of all Cuban exiles who arrived in Key West during the Mariel boatlift. More than 130,000 landed there between April and September 1980. They matched that list against the 1,600 boats used during the exodus. The list was compiled from long-forgotten U.S. Coast Guard records and supplemented by an arrival log maintained by Key West exile Arturo Cobo.

Barry and Rosenblatt blended the lists into one, in effect creating a Mariel community for those refugees -- a place where they can create a passenger list for each boat, connect with each other and share photos of their lives in exile.

The newspaper is inviting Mariel refugees to come to Cuba Nostalgia this weekend and find themselves on the database with the help of the staffers who created it. They can also have their memories of their voyage recorded in video and audio by staffers from the Miami Herald and WLRN/Miami Herald News. The tapings will be done Saturday and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the newspapers' Exilio booth.

Cuba Nostalgia 2010 runs from Friday through Sunday at Tamiami Park's Fair-Expo Center, Coral Way and Southwest 112nd Avenue. Hours are 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday. Admission cost $12.

The database can be found at http://www.miamiherald.com/cgi-bin/mariel.

Miami Herald staffer Luisa Yanez can be reached at lyanez@MiamiHerald.com or at 305-376-4627. She will be at the newspapers' Exilio booth all weekend.