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Desperate Cubans plot riskier
routes to U.S.
By Gary Marx Tribune foreign
correspondent. Chicago Tribune, Yahoo!
News, June 27, 2005.
Isabel Guerrero last saw her husband and
20-year-old son 14 months ago.
They set off from near this fishing village
in southeastern Cuba in the dead of night,
heading across miles of open water for Honduras
and eventually, they hoped, a new life in
the United States. But the men disappeared
without a trace and probably were swallowed
up in the treacherous seas.
"I still hold out hope that one day
I will hear from them and they are alive,"
said Guerrero, 43. "They knew it was
dangerous, but they were willing to take
the risk."
More than 10 years after 37,000 people
left the island in flimsy boats in what
became known as the "rafters crisis,"
Cubans continue risking their lives at sea
to reach the United States--and they are
taking more perilous routes to do so.
Many of them set off from here. Santa Cruz
del Sur and its picturesque bay has become
a popular launch point for Cubans trying
to avoid the stepped-up U.S. and Cuban patrols
in the Florida Straits.
Though it is only 90 miles from Havana
to the Florida Keys, the voyage from southern
Cuba to Honduras covers more than 500 miles
of water. But Honduras' lenient immigration
policy has made it the temporary destination
of choice among many Cuban migrants, who
then make their way north to the U.S.
First they must survive a harrowing voyage
that could last weeks, traveling in boats
that often have only a magnetic compass
and a modest supply of food and water.
Miguel Angel Fontanil, a 44-year-old Santa
Cruz del Sur resident, said he fled last
year with four other migrants in a 15-foot
plastic boat powered by an engine cannibalized
from a water pump.
The engine died after a week, forcing Fontanil
and the others to row for several days.
The boat was swamped by 20-foot waves. Some
passengers suffered severe sunburns, and
one man was so delusional that he threw
himself into the ocean and had to be rescued.
"I was hallucinating," Fontanil
recalled. "I was seeing palm trees
and buildings and hearing music."
Like many migrants, Fontanil was blown
off course by bad weather and ended up in
Belize, where he was jailed for four months
and deported back to Cuba. Others are lost
forever.
55 vanish at sea in 18 months
Mayra Sanchez, an opposition activist in
Santa Cruz del Sur who is tracking the migration,
said that at least 55 of the estimated 1,000
Cubans attempting the voyage to Honduras
in the last 18 months have disappeared and
are presumed dead.
Like most Cuban rafters, those fleeing
Santa Cruz del Sur are primarily men in
their 20s or 30s who leave behind mothers,
wives and children relieved at the word
of a successful voyage but shattered by
grief if no word arrives at all.
In the squat homes that line the city's
dirt streets, desperate women push frayed
photographs of loved ones lost at sea into
the hands of strangers in the hope they
can bring news of survival.
Kenia Morales said she hasn't heard a word
from her daughter, son-in-law and 4-year-old
grandson since they left Santa Cruz del
Sur in March 2004.
Morales' sister managed to telephone Honduran
authorities, but they had no information
on the group.
"They told us to wait, but we could
wait a long time," Morales said. "She
is my only child, and he is my only grandchild."
On the other side of town, Angela Perez
is trying to find out what happened to her
32-year-old son during a voyage in November.
Perez's son was piloting a boat carrying
six friends. It ran aground on a reef off
the Cayman Islands, where many migrants
stop briefly before continuing their journey
to Honduras.
"One person said that he got on a
raft to look for help and got lost,"
Perez said. "But others say that he
dived into the water to get the boat off
the reef and was eaten by a shark."
The conflicting stories have left Perez
with a flicker of hope that her son is alive.
"That's what my heart is telling me,"
she said, breaking into sobs. "It could
be an illusion."
But for many, the risks are worth it. Cubans
who survive the voyage and reach the U.S.
not only send money back to support their
relatives, but also return for visits clad
in nice clothing and carrying other trappings
of capitalism.
"The youth see this and they want
a better life," said Sanchez, the Santa
Cruz del Sur activist. "Always after
a Cuban-American visits here, there are
two or three departures by sea."
Cuban officials blame the stream of rafters
on the 4-decade-old U.S. economic embargo,
which they say has crippled the island's
economy. They also criticize America's "wet-foot,
dry-foot" policy, under which Cubans
who make it to U.S. soil can stay but those
picked up at sea are sent back.
But some Santa Cruz del Sur residents said
Cuba's socialist system crushes economic
opportunity and leads to a level of desperation
that would send some on what can only be
described as a suicidal voyage.
Although the waters off Santa Cruz del
Sur are rich in lobster and shrimp, the
Cuban government monopolizes the catch and
sells it in state-run restaurants catering
to tourists, or exports it for hard currency.
Some residents, desperate to earn cash,
fish anyway, but they risk heavy fines and
jail terms.
"If the government allowed me to fish,
I wouldn't have left Cuba," said Luis
Alberto Gomez, a 29-year-old Santa Cruz
del Sur native who left his wife and infant
son to cross the Caribbean Sea in October.
Gomez now lives in Miami, installs granite
countertops and sends his family about $200
a month.
Raul Enrique Garcia, a 32-year-old Santa
Cruz del Sur resident who has tried twice
to flee Cuba by boat, said it is impossible
to live decently on a government salary
that averages $10 a month. He ekes out a
living selling soft drinks on the black
market.
"I want to live like a human being
without this repression," Garcia said.
"There is no future here."
Many avoid detection
The most popular route by sea from Cuba
to the U.S. is northward across the Florida.
Straits. U.S. officials estimate that 50
percent of the approximately 3,000 Cubans
who travel that route annually avoid detection
and make it to U.S. shores.
Migrants intercepted by the U.S. Coast
Guard usually are sent back to Cuba, where
they are detained briefly and released.
But the Coast Guard does not patrol the
waters between southern Cuba and Honduras,
the only Central American country where
Cubans do not face repatriation.
"You have a balloon effect,"
said one U.S. official who asked not to
be identified. "Cubans are taking the
path of least resistance."
Once in Honduras, the migrants either make
their way north through Guatemala and Mexico
by themselves or pay smugglers $1,000 to
$6,000 to help them reach the U.S. border,
where they are allowed to enter after authorities
verify their Cuban origin.
Though it is hard to say exactly how many
Cubans make the trip by sea to Honduras,
more Cubans are coming to the U.S.
Linda Loveless of U.S. Customs and Border
Protection said about 6,100 Cubans crossed
into the U.S. from Mexico in 2004, up from
about 3,000 in 2002. Already this year about
5,000 Cubans have entered the U.S. from
Mexico, mostly along the south Texas border.
Their journey often ends in South Florida,
among other Cubans.
"I am very sad because I'm not with
my family, but I'm happy because I am working
and helping them," said Gomez, who
is trying to figure out how to get his wife
and son into the United States.
One way they will not travel is by sea.
"It's too dangerous," he said.
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