Thread: Steppedup patrols prompt Cubans to risk southern route to US

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Stepped-up patrols prompt Cubans to risk southern route to US
By Indira A. R. Lakshmanan, Globe Staff | August 11, 2005

SANTA CRUZ DEL SUR, Cuba -- An increasing number of Cubans are attempting to reach the United States by risking a roundabout and perilous 500-mile southern journey across open seas to Central America, and even more obstacles during an overland trek through Mexico.

Those trying the southern route probably are still fewer than those who set out on the long-established path to the United States -- the 90-mile sea crossing due north to Florida. But with stepped-up US Coast Guard patrols catching and repatriating an estimated half of those who attempt to sneak across the Florida Straits, Cubans facing rising prices, meager salaries, and dwindling hope are becoming increasingly desperate to find other ways to flee their homeland.

Cubans who make it to US soil undetected are generally permitted to stay under the so-called ''wet foot-dry foot" immigration policy. For the great number who cannot afford $10,000 smugglers' fees on speed boats to Miami that have a shot at outrunning Coast Guard cutters, the southern sea route via Honduras -- the only Central American country that does not repatriate Cuban refugees -- has become a hazardous but ever more popular escape path.

Honduras recorded the arrival of 259 Cuban boat people last year, up from just 69 the year before, said Carlos Amilcar Sanchez of the Honduran Immigration Department. Many more come in undetected, authorities say. Those attempting the southern crossing in rickety homemade boats and rafts must contend with hurricanes, sharks, and shipwrecks, while stretching their food and water supplies for weeks at sea.

They also risk being blown off course to the Cayman Islands or Belize, where authorities detain and repatriate them.

Some survivors have told relatives they had to bribe corrupt local Honduran officials to let them go, or pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to smugglers to take them through Guatemala and Mexico. Some are then robbed of their papers by Mexicans wishing to pose as Cubans in the United States to avoid being sent home, and can be stuck for months in legal limbo before obtaining copies of their identity papers from home.

The number of Cubans clandestinely crossing from Mexico into the United States has more than doubled over the last two years, from an estimated 3,000 in 2002 to some 6,100 last year, according to US Customs and Border Protection. As of June, more than 5,000 Cubans had crossed from Mexico undetected this year, officials said, while only 10 were caught at the Mexican border and prevented from crossing.

In contrast, 1,866 Cubans have been interdicted and sent home from Florida waters this year as of last week, a substantial increase over the 1,034 caught in all of last year, said Salvador Zamora, a US Border Patrol spokesman.

With its hidden coves and favorable wind patterns, this dusty, hardscrabble fishing town 400 miles southeast of Havana has become a preferred embarkation point for Cubans fleeing via the southern route.

Mayra Sanchez, 46, a Santa Cruz del Sur resident and government critic who is informally tracking the migration, estimates that some 8,000 to 9,000 Cubans have attempted to sail from the town to Honduras in the past three years, with 80 to 100 she knows of never heard from again.

''The majority make it, so for many young people it seems worth the risk," Sanchez said. ''Every day, we face risks here because of lack of food, so many are willing to gamble for their liberty."

For those whose sons, daughters, and husbands don't make it, the gamble comes at too high a price. Sanchez's 24-year-old stepson died in an escape attempt, leaving two infant sons.

Cuban authorities blame the tide of rafters on the 43-year-old US trade embargo that, they say, has choked the economy and kept import prices high. Critics of Fidel Castro's government blame the communist system for keeping people poor by squelching initiative and private enterprise, fueling suicidal escape attempts.

Retired economist Melvi Herrera Lopez last spoke to her nephew when he said good-bye, shortly before he left Cuba in March 2004 in a 23-foot wooden boat packed with 16 people. She begged him not to go, but with his measly security guard's salary equivalent to $6 a month and no hope for a better life, he could not be dissuaded.

Fifteen months later, she has not heard a word from 32-year-old Jorge Enrique Culley, nor his companions. Herrera, 64, who has worried pounds off her already slender frame, made frantic calls to relatives in Miami and parted with every solo picture she had of her dead sister's son, whom she raised as her own, in hopes that someone could help find him.

For Herrera and the families of the 15 others, not knowing what happened has been a torment.

''Some people say they were enslaved by authorities; others say they were robbed or killed, or that the young women were raped or forced into prostitution," Herrera said shakily, shredding a tissue in her bony hands.

''At times I think they arrived in Honduras and were taken elsewhere where they don't speak the language, and eventually they may escape. But these are things one imagines to keep one's hopes up," she admitted. Six months after he disappeared, Culley's wife gave up hope and remarried.

Every block in this hard-luck town of unpaved streets and one-story cinder block or wooden homes seems to have four or five families with relatives in Miami who send money home, Sanchez said, markedly improving the living standard of those left behind. Whenever a Cuban visits from the United States, sporting snazzy clothes and cellphones and showing off pictures of Disney World, two or three more locals flee shortly thereafter, she said.

Nelsy Rodriguez Tamayo, a 45-year-old nurse, earns the equivalent of $13 a month -- high by local standards -- but nevertheless lives ''from one plate of food to another," without enough money for soap, shampoo, and detergent, which are sold at US dollar prices. Even her 11-year-old daughter encouraged her to flee, saying, ''Get out of this situation; don't be a coward."

Rodriguez tried to escape on March 23 in a 28-foot homemade boat bound for Honduras, but authorities had been tipped off and thwarted the launch, capturing her while her companions escaped. She was taken to a municipal police station and interrogated overnight, and feels she is being watched by authorities as an ''undesirable" ever since. ''I know of people who've made it to Miami, and it's been a total change of life. They have two jobs; they send money home. But there are other reasons, too," she added, lowering her voice. ''We want to be spiritually free, to express ourselves."

For two sons of Elsa Pena Rodriguez, 57, a retired funeral home worker who lives in a rickety two-room shack, fleeing to the United States has given them a future they could have never dreamed of, and their mother $50 a month -- nearly 10 times her monthly pension. In February 2004, the two men fled on a fishing boat that hit a storm and sank off the coast of Honduras, forcing them to swim ashore. The younger son's father paid a Mexican attorney to help them get safely to his home in Miami. The men now earn $10 an hour cleaning sewers.

Both of their wives followed by the same route, nearly losing their lives to shipwreck and sharks, before making it to the United States.

Today, the reunited couples send home photos of themselves in modern kitchens full of appliances, driving silver Nissan and Honda cars, and posing with Mickey Mouse. Pena's granddaughter grins from a photo in a room with pink wallpaper with a matching bedspread, surrounded by dolls.

''Here they didn't even have a bicycle, much less a car!" Pena exclaimed.

In her home, Sanchez wept on a recent day when her 20-year-old son called to say he, too, had arrived safely in Miami. He had been studying law, but could see no future in Cuba. So after a failed attempt to flee by sea last year, he migrated legally to the United States with his father through a visa lottery.

As much as she opposes Cuba's political system, Sanchez had begged him not to leave. Because of the Bush administration's limits on Cuban exiles' trips home, ''We won't see him for three years," she sobbed. ''Even though life is not good here, I have faith that it can't stay like this. . . . There has to be a change."

Even her 11-year-old daughter encouraged her to flee, saying, ''Get out of this situation; don't be a coward."

Ya know, for some reason I can't picture an 11 yr. old saying that. Telling her mother to go without her. Most 11 yr. olds want to be near their mother no matter what the situation. Most mothers would find it impossible to voluntarily go to another country leaving their child behind, no matter how hard it was. In fact, I think it would make me more inclined to stay near them.