Posted: Friday, December 21, 2007 1:50 PM
Filed Under: Havana, Cuba
PERICO, Cuba – This tiny town is in mourning this holiday season.
Forty residents of Perico, some 100 miles southeast of Havana, are believed dead, drowned at sea on a failed smuggling operation.
The group, which included somewhere between nine and 12 children, set off in the pre-dawn hours on Saturday, Nov. 24, and was expected to be dropped off in the Florida Keys by Sunday.
No one has heard from them since.
"People leave here all the time but they always make it to land, somewhere," said Maria Galban, waiting for some word about the fate of her brother Jorge, his wife and two children, aged 10 and 19.
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| Roberto León / NBC News |
| Maria Galban looks despondent while explaining that she doesn’t know the fate of her brother, sister-in-law, and their two children since they set off in a boat for the U.S. |
This was Jorge’s fourth attempt to leave the island. Twice he ended up in the Bahamas, only to be extradited back to Cuba. On one of those occasions, he spent four months in a Bahamian immigration detention center. Another time, Cuban Border Guards stopped him in local waters.
"He always came back to us. We always heard something," Galban said, as she wept.
Her only consolation comes from living in a relatively small town of approximately 31,000 residents where neighbors treat everyone like family. People say the entire town shares in the collective grief of losing so many people at one time.
‘Where is my son?’
Maria Mirna Gutierrez is devastated over the disappearance of her son, Jorge Luis, a supervisor on a state farm. "He left for work that morning and never came home," she said. "Where is my son? I cannot be consoled. I don’t know if I can survive this."
She too is not alone in her grief. The night she spoke with NBC News, a large crowd of neighbors gathered silently outside her home, mistakenly thinking that someone in authority had come to give the grieving mother news on her son.
In the middle of the interview with Gutierrez, a younger woman, Aranelis Cabrera, barged in, clutching a photo of her missing relatives. Cabrera is searching for her brother Renier and wife Idania. She still has not worked up the courage to tell her ailing parents that the couple is missing. "This would kill them," she said. Her only hope is that her brother, who had a job as a night watchman, turns up alive before too long.
Cuban authorities think that’s a long shot.
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| VIDEO: Dangerous passage from Cuba |
No sign of boat or passengers
Acting on Missing Person’s Reports filed by the families here, the Cuban Border Guards sent out patrols to search local waters and deserted keys for either survivors or evidence of an accident.
Nothing has been found of either the black 32-foot Wellcraft speedboat with its twin engines or the human cargo. The families report they also have been assured that the missing passengers are not in police custody. No one is being held on charges that could include trying to leave the country by illegal means.
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| Roberto León / NBC News |
| Maria Mirna Gutierrez weeps while discussing the disappearance of her son. |
At the same time, the U.S. Coast Guard conducted its own extensive air-and-sea search, also coming up empty-handed.
While both countries remain on alert for this craft, few hold out hope for finding anyone alive after almost a month. Too much time has passed.
The long time lapse itself may have been the biggest hindrance to the initial rescue efforts.
Even after the boat failed to arrive on schedule, anxious relatives on both sides of the Florida Straits waited almost two weeks before reporting the incident to either U.S. or Cuban authorities.
If indeed all the passengers perished in the journey, it will be noted as the single worst smuggling tragedy from Cuba.
While more Cubans over recent years have taken to the sea aboard smuggling speedboats, chiefly originating from south Florida, they are both illegal and dangerous operations.
Fear delayed search
According to the families in Perico, fear was one reason why people waited so long – fear from breaking the law in both countries, but also fear of reprisals from the smugglers.
"This is all very dangerous," said Judy Carvajal, whose only sister and 10-year-old niece were on board the boat.
The smugglers charge up to $12,000 a head, far beyond the reach of most Cubans living on the island. So, relatives already residing in the U.S. usually make the arrangements and pay the fee –even going into debt to do so. While they know smuggling is illegal, they are also desperate to be reunited with their families.
Both the U.S. Coast Guard and the Cuban Border Guards seem frustrated by the steady upswing in smuggling despite their separate efforts at stopping the illegal trade.
The Cuban authorities complain that the speedboats that come into isolated beachheads to pick up their passengers under cover of night are just too fast to apprehend. Using local guides and sophisticated GPS navigators, a smuggling boat can land on shore, board its passengers and leave in under three minutes.
Speed also thwarts U.S. Coast Guard efforts, which reports that over 60 percent of the Cubans known to have illegally set off to sea last fiscal year slipped past American radars and made it to U.S. shores. There, the Cubans become political refugees, classified under the so-called "wet foot/dry foot" policy – the special immigration status that allows any Cuban touching U.S. soil to stay and become eligible for residency.
The Cuban government points to this policy of privilege as the impetus for people to risk their lives in these dangerous and costly crossings while the Bush administration insists its Cuba’s failed economy and repressive political system driving people to the perilous sea.
Comment:Remember Elian Gonzalez? His mother lost her life and her child lost his mother because of the same kind of crazy/dangerous attempt. If we normalized relations with Cuba those who wanted to come could do so like immigrants from any other country.
Who knows what else the smugglers bring who bring the many desperate people? Narcotics? That's the same way they get in. Yet in Miami these smugglers are treated as heroes in the Cuban exile community. The U.S. Coast Guard has an impossible task here.
First they're supposed to catch the Cubans and take them back, but if they don't catch them, the Cubans then get to stay? How can the Goasties take their own jobs seriously if the policy which is in place sends mixed messages?
Thanks for having this discussion.
_Link_: http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com
Y esta es la respuesta de Jose Reyes que fue censurada y decidio abrir una pagina para poder dar su opinion.
_My Comment_: Jose Reyes - Cubanology.com
My comment here will be directed towards 2 individuals, one the writer
of this article and another towards Mr. Lippman. Mary Murray, your news
agency along with CNN, CBS, ABC and the rest of the major media networks
here and around the world are the least informed on the everyday
occurrences in Cuba. Your coverage within Cuba is very limited and also
your coverage is censored by the criminal, totalitarian communist Castro
regime, so your information within Cuba is totally useless and
undependable. Where were your writers on December 10 (International
Human Rights Day), when a group of demonstrators conducted a pacifist
march for "Freedom of Speech", they were disrupted, beaten and arrested
by Castro's security forces, there is video available for everyone to
see, if interested. Or have you heard of the "Damas de Blanco", why is
there no documentation found on your news agency or the others
concerning these courageous women. There are many credible and
respectable Blogs and Websites that everyone here can visit and learn
exactly what is taking place in Cuba every single minute.
No one is to say what type of reaction one would really have or
would not have in this particular case presented here when reading about
this unfortunate incident. As you can see by everybody's comments here,
they are mixed but I respect more the ones from the Cuban exiles. Unless
one is or has been deprived of their freedom, that means, no freedom of
speech, no freedom of press, no religious freedom, rationed food, no
freedom to vote, no freedom of international travel out of the country
and so on like Cubans in Cuba face everyday, then who else is to say how
they would react. You don't know what freedom is until you lose it,
remember that.
With all the "facts" I just presented here concerning the
situation of "Human Rights" in Cuba, I can say that no one, in their
right minds could deny my argument here, unless they side with the
Castro regime, hello Walter? This is why, by definition anyone can come
to the conclusion, that any Cubans "Escaping" Cuba, is a refugee, not an
immigrant or neither a migrant which is the status that has been stamped
on their foreheads since 1994. It used to be that if any Cuban "Fleeing"
Cuba was found in International waters, they would be escorted and
welcomed into the United States. It was Mr. Clinton who changed the law,
since then, to be considered "Free" you would have to physically touch
American soil. What's the difference? If you are in the Ocean, you are a
Migrant but if you touch land then you are a refugee, absolutely
ridiculous!
That brings me back to Mr. Lippman again, he failed to mention
the Wet Foot/Dry Foot "Policy" that Clinton implemented. If this law did
not exist, the Cubans fleeing Cuba, like in this instance would have
never gone through this unfortunate disaster and smugglers would not
exist, unless they were smuggling narcotics from the Castro Regime in
Cuba.Yes, Mr. Lippman, the notorious American Socialist/Communist, just
go to his website, same name. What kind of credibility can he have?
Thank You, Jose Reyes-Cubanology.com
Walter Lippmann, Los Angeles, California (Sent Friday, December 21, 2007 3:42 PM)