By Jennifer Babson, Miami Herald, 3/18/2001.
Boston Globe
KEY LARGO, Fla. - Four Cubans who embarked for the Florida Keys in the past
two months had two things in common.
They were fleeing their island home clandestinely, trying to reach Florida
by boat. And they all died mysteriously of head injuries.
The unusual deaths, and their coincidence with a sharp increase in the
number of Cuban migrants being smuggled into the United States aboard
sophisticated high-speed boats, have drawn the attention of several federal
agencies, including the FBI.
The FBI is trying to determine whether some deaths might have been the
result of ''crimes on the high seas.'' As a result, even routine information,
such as autopsy reports, is being kept under wraps.
Investigators say they still do not know the circumstances of the deaths.
They could have been accidents. They could have been the result of recklessness
on the part of smugglers, who routinely overload their boats to multiply their
profits. The deaths could also be something worse.
For most of the past four decades, the story of Cubans trying to reach South
Florida by sea has usually been one of rickety boats and homemade rafts.
But now, souped-up speedboats, whose trips originate not from Cuba but from
Florida, have largely replaced the low-tech vessels. Fares for the trips, often
underwritten by Miami relatives, generally run between $2,000 and $6,000 per
person.
Investigators say the boats are captained by for-profit smugglers who are
more brazen, more violent, and more willing to do what it takes to deliver the
maximum load without being captured.
''What people need to realize is that there are organizations out there that
are plundering the market and don't care about the people, and that is borne out
by the deaths that we are seeing,'' said an assistant US attorney, Patricia
Diaz. ''It is a profit motive here, and people are dying - people who don't have
to die.''
For Cuban exiles such as Arturo Cobo, a veteran of the Mariel boatlift who
used to run a refugee center near Key West, the four deaths are particularly
troubling. There have always been horror stories of Cubans perishing in the
Florida Straits because of perilous seas. But nothing like this.
''In my case, I don't remember any refugees who died after they got on the
boat,'' Cobo said.
The four whose deaths remain unexplained are:
Juana Maria Sanchez, 73, who died on board a boat that arrived just before
midnight Feb. 22 in the Florida Keys.
Mileydis Cuellar, 27, a passenger on the same boat who was pronounced dead
several hours later at Mariners Hospital in Tavernier.
Nelson Zayas, 35, whose bruised body was plucked from the waters off
Marathon Jan. 19, a gash on his head.
Cira Rodriguez de Gomez, who authorities believe disappeared on her way from
Cuba to the United States aboard a smuggling boat in January, though her body
was never found. Rodriguez's husband told investigators that he received an
anonymous phone call from a man who said his wife had struck her head while on
the boat, had died, and was buried on a cay in the Bahamas.
Cuellar and Sanchez died from ''trauma to the head,'' according to the
Monroe County medical examiner's office, an assessment disputed by Cuellar's
relatives in Miami, who say she was not injured on the trip. Zayas died from
''drowning secondary to extensive trauma to the head,'' according to the FBI.
The people died in the winter months, when rougher seas usually mean fewer
passages. But the Coast Guard said 210 Cuban migrants landed in the keys in
January and February, compared with 96 in that period last year.
''It's a racetrack out there at night. On any given night you can have two
to three go-fast boats out there,'' said Commander Marcus Woodring, operations
officer for the Coast Guard's Group Key West. ''It's not like a
search-and-rescue mission. They don't want to be found. They are not going to
call us on the radio.''
The Coast Guard says that smugglers are beginning to substitute firearms for
the machetes routinely stashed aboard migrant boats.
Patrol officers intercepting a go-fast boat near Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas
in December said they had discovered a loaded gun with hollow-point bullets, the
kind that expand when they hit a target.
Authorities say they are particularly alarmed because as smuggling has
increased, it has remained difficult to crack ventures that now resemble
organized rings. Investigators say they get little cooperation from passengers
on these boats and from the relatives, who often pay for their passage.
''That's the chance they have to bring their family, so they aren't going to
talk to anybody,'' Cobo said. Authorities rarely catch smugglers, who typically
swoop into remote, pitch-black stretches of beach along the Florida Keys and
dump their passengers with instructions to remain still for a few hours to buy
the smugglers getaway time.
This story ran on page A10 of the Boston Globe on
3/18/2001.
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