By Tere Figueras and Wilfredo Cancio Isla.
tfigueras@herald.com. Posted on Tue, Feb. 18, 2003 in The Miami Herald.
When Fidel Castro gave a speech Feb. 6 to an international gathering at a
theater named for the father of socialism, four Cuban border patrol guards saw
their chance to break for freedom.
They radioed headquarters, saying they were chasing an intruder near
Havana's Karl Marx theater. It was a lie, but they were desperate. They knew the
radar operators wouldn't be able to tell whether the blip they were watching was
one boat or two.
''We spent seven months preparing this,'' said Lt. Edgar Raúl Batista
Gamboa, the boat's commanding officer and an 11-year veteran of the Cuban border
guard. "It seemed we were condemned to remain back there.''
Five hours later, they tied their 30-foot boat behind the Hyatt Key West
Resort and Marina -- just a short distance from the U.S. Coast Guard Station --
and were walking down the island's main drag.
Dressed in camouflage gear, carrying weapons and declaring they were
defectors, Batista and his subordinates flagged down a Key West police officer
and were soon being taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol for
questioning.
On Friday Batista, 30, 2nd Lt. Ofil Lara Corría, 31, and soldiers
Yoandri Rodríguez Tamayo, 20, and Rodisan Segura López, 19, were
released from immigration authorities. They were staying in a Miami hotel
Monday.
Segura, the youngest, was unaware of his older colleagues' plan until the
last minute, but confessed to a long-held infatuation to escape to ''Yuma,''
slang for the United States of America, and readily agreed.
The men said they had been interviewed and given lie-detector tests by FBI
agents during their weeklong detention.
The Miami office of the FBI would not confirm how, or even if, the men were
questioned by federal agents, FBI spokesman Wayne Russell said Monday.
The brazen plan -- pulled off just after Castro finished addressing 4,000
international educators -- was inspired by a failed plot to allow a Miami exile
to pick up his relatives, said Batista.
The Miami Cuban had offered the guards $10,000 to look the other way as he
steered his boat into Cuban waters.
''I was supposed to intercept the boat coming from Miami and then let it go,
giving our [headquarters] false information about its markings and model,''
Batista said.
"That meant $1,000 for two of us and $8,000 for me, plus a modern car
my friend had bought from a foreigner.''
The plan was foiled when Batista got into a car wreck, among several other
unfortunate glitches.
But the idea of escape became an obsession. It was Lara who first decided to
leave. ''I had to be brave to tell [Batista] that, because he had been a
commander for 11 years,'' Lara said. "But beginning that day, we became
like brothers.''
Batista, who earned a monthly salary of 620 Cuban pesos -- about $23 --
after more than a decade of service, eventually agreed to a definite plan of
departure.
The final straw, he said, came as he watched a video of Cubans who had
recently arrived in Miami.
''That opened my mind and made me think,'' he said. "They were ordinary
people, guajiros [peasants] like me, who had left Cuba not long ago and were
already leading a normal life, with comforts we couldn't even dream about.''
He plans to work and send money back to the family he left behind: his wife
and their daughter, Catherine de la Caridad, who will celebrate her first
birthday Saturday.
Herald translator Renato Pérez and Herald staff writer Elaine De
Valle contributed to this report. |