Most Cuban exiles loop through Mexico, not straits to Florida
By JOHN LANTIGUA and JEREMY SCHWARTZ

Sunday, February 03, 2008

WEST PALM BEACH — It was darkest night on the sea, but lights finally glowed with hope on the horizon.

Tania Hernandez Gala, 35, and her daughter, Gabriela, 9, escaping Cuba, had endured 25 hours on a small, crowded boat, never losing their fears.

Not only did the mercurial sea scare them but also the smugglers looked like pirates.

"In Cuba, we're not accustomed to seeing men who aren't in the military carrying guns," Hernandez says. "The men who ran the boats were all armed and had the faces of mafiosos. They were rough men. They scared me."

Even after they landed, the mother worried. If that white sand beach had been Florida, Hernandez could have breathed easily. But that was not the case.

Like the majority of seaborne Cuban exiles these days, Hernandez and Gabriela did not sail north to Florida. They headed west and came ashore on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. A long, potentially hazardous journey to the U.S. border still lay ahead.

During the past three fiscal years, 27,393 of the 32,251 Cubans who arrived in the United States seeking political asylum without prior permission crossed the border at Mexico, according to the Department of Homeland Security. That amounts to 85 percent.

The Mexican route has contributed to one the largest spikes in Cubans coming to the U.S. in the 49 years since Fidel Castro took power.

Palm Beach County is feeling ripple effects from that exodus: Since Oct. 15 alone, at least 60 Cubans who were smuggled out or who set off on their own for the U.S. have come to live in the county. Two-thirds of those traveled through Mexico.

By making for Mexico, Cubans avoid being interdicted in the Florida Straits by the U.S. Coast Guard and shipped back to the island.

"And the journey by sea in that direction is shorter and less treacherous," says attorney Aimee Cernicharo of the St. Thomas University Human Rights Institute in West Palm Beach, who helps recently arrived Cubans.

Although Cuba, at its nearest point, is only 90 miles from the Florida Keys, most clandestine trips north are much longer. Smugglers aim farther up the Florida shoreline to avoid the Coast Guard.

Riviera Beach, where a group of 34 arrived in November, is about 300 miles from Cuba. The voyages can take days, and countless Cubans have died en route.

Meanwhile, the distance from Cuba's westernmost province, Pinar del Rio, to the Yucatan is about 130 miles. The Mexican coast is less well-guarded, and smugglers, once clear of Cuban waters, can operate with less worry of being intercepted.

'I just wanted out'

"We left Cuba about 10 p.m. one night and got to Mexico at 11 the next night," says Hernandez, who made the journey last spring.

Hernandez and Gabriela traveled with 15 other Cubans in a fishing boat about 25 feet long with three engines.

She had tried to get permission to leave legally but was denied because she was a government-trained pharmacy manager who was needed in Cuba. It would take up to five years to get a permit.

"Then one day a person came up to me on the street and whispered, 'Would you like to get out of here on a boat?' " Hernandez recalls. "I had been seen at the immigration office, and they knew I wanted out."

How much would it cost for her and Gabriela, she asked. She was quoted the going rate.

"Ten thousand dollars each. A total of $20,000," she recounts. "That was for the trip to Mexico by boat and then through Mexico to the border."

With pledges of money from relatives outside Cuba, Hernandez booked two passages on a smuggler's boat. She was told not to carry belongings, but she prepared a backpack for Gabriela.

"They told me they might call on short notice, so I should stay at home as much as possible," Hernandez says.

During the next three months, she and Gabriela endured two false starts. In March, they spent two nights sleeping on a swampy beach with 22 other would-be passengers, waiting for a boat that never arrived due to bad weather.

And in April, they and others were arrested by Cuban authorities as they awaited a second boat. She and Gabriela spent one night in custody.

"Two days later, another boat was leaving, and we got on it," Hernandez says. "I didn't worry about getting caught again. I just wanted out."

Three was the charm.

Hernandez and her daughter, along with 15 others, shoved off from a dark beach, and for 25 hours they lay on deck.

Two crewmen, who spoke with Cuban accents, manned the vessel. They offered food and soft drinks to the passengers. Hernandez did not eat, afraid of seasickness, but the seas were calm.

On the outskirts of Cancun, the passengers were transferred to two small boats manned by Mexicans and taken to a nearby house. They were given fresh clothes. Within hours they were taken to a house inland, where they got more clothes, toothbrushes and toothpaste.

"It was a house big enough for all of us," Hernandez says. "We slept in bunk beds. There was a pool, television, music, food and drink."

Gabriela and another girl in the group swam in the pool.

"But we weren't allowed to go out at all," Hernandez says. "We were told we would be taken to the border but that it wasn't safe to move at the moment."

Two weeks later, in early May, they all received illegally bought Mexican transit permits, boarded buses and headed north, through Mexico City, to the U.S. border. In the Mexican border city of Hidalgo, Hernandez, Gabriela and four others were put in a taxi and given $6 to pay the fare to the U.S. border checkpoint.

At 11 p.m. May 7, Hernandez approached the booth.

"We are from Cuba, and we want to apply for political asylum," she says, showing her Cuban ID.

Early the next morning, after standard processing, Hernandez and Gabriela were released and made for nearby McAllen International Airport, where relatives had airline tickets waiting for them. They arrived in West Palm Beach that day.

'We even had seat belts'

For Alberto Gonzalez, 41, the trip was easier and shorter. A business administrator for the Cuban government, Gonzalez just arrived in West Palm Beach in December, but he had been trying to get out for much longer.

In 1994, during the Cuban "rafter crisis," which sent 37,000 Cubans to Florida in a matter of weeks, Gonzalez wanted out.

"But I had no money, I had a son who was very young, and to tell you the truth, I was afraid of the sea," he says.

As he grew more disgusted with Cuba, he thought seriously about taking to the water. But in August, an acquaintance died at sea while trying to sail north to Florida.

Gonzalez decided the way to go was through Mexico. He made inquiries. He also had to pay $10,000.

"On December 15, word arrived for me at my mother's house that a boat was leaving," he recalls.

Gonzalez was told to be at Parque Lenin in Havana, an amusement park named after Soviet icon Vladimir Lenin, at 7 p.m. three days later. He met a group of fellow passengers near the roller coaster, and they were transported to Pinar del Rio.

At 1:30 a.m., he and about two dozen others boarded a fiberglass fast boat about 25 feet long.

"We had seats in the boat," Gonzalez says. "We even had seat belts."

The group arrived after sunrise on the beach at Cancun.

"I think we got there around 8 a.m.," he says. "Six, seven hours. It was fast."

The trip north was also fast. Gonzalez and his fellow travelers were met by Mexicans, taken to a house near the beach and given fresh clothes. Within two hours, they were on buses for the border.

About 26 hours later, they arrived at the Brownsville, Texas, border crossing. Early the next day Gonzalez was in a van run by a company called Balseros de Cuba (Cuban Rafters), which transports Cubans to their relatives' doorsteps in South Florida for $300. He arrived in West Palm Beach on Dec. 22.

'The currents grabbed us'

Most make the journey without serious incident, according to the accounts of new arrivals. But not all.

Luis Perez, 36, of Havana province boarded a boat there with 11 others on July 22. They headed west without a smuggler or a guide.

"The currents in the Gulf of Mexico grabbed us and took us north," Perez says.

They spent 29 days at sea, the last 14 without food, he says. They ran out of drinking water, too, except for one day when it rained and they collected a little.

A Turkish freighter finally picked them up off the port of Tampico, hundreds of miles north of the Yucatan. All 12 were alive, although some just barely.

"The Turks gave us water, but it was cold, and some people drank it too fast," Perez says. "Three of the people died right there after we were found, and after they drank the water. It was horrible."

Perez spent 87 days in a Mexican immigration jail. He arrived in the U.S. on Nov. 11, almost four months from the day he set out.

Even for those who avoid such tragedy, the trip can be harrowing. Some Cubans report being robbed, assaulted and extorted for money in Mexico. There also have been reported cases of rape.

Other Cubans get visas out of Cuba to other Latin American countries, then sneak their way north toward Mexico and the U.S. border. For them, the journey is even longer, and they report being swindled by would-be smugglers, including other exiled Cubans, and being mistreated by officials in countries along their route.

Mexican officials say they are alarmed at the spike in Cubans being smuggled through their country. Mexican authorities detained 254 undocumented Cubans near Cancun in 2003, but that number soared to 2,205 in 2006.

Those same Mexican authorities believe an increasingly violent Cuban exile mafia has taken control of smuggling operations. More than a half-dozen people linked to the business have been slain in the Yucatan since last summer.
They include Luis Lara of Hialeah, who was found July 30 bound, gagged and riddled with bullets on a ranch near Cancun. Days later, his girlfriend and two Mexican associates were found dead in a well near Cancun.

"We believe these people were executed by the Cuban-American mafia," says Melchor Rodriguez, attorney general of Quintana Roo state, home to Cancun.

But those Cuban-Americans also have Mexican officials on their payrolls, without whom they could not operate, according to both Mexican investigators and press accounts.

"The gangs are very well-organized, well-financed and very powerful," says Mexican Sen. Carlos Navarrete. "They are a very serious problem for both governments, Cuba and Mexico."

The Cancun newspaper Por Esto, citing a classified federal report, has reported that the Cuban smuggling operation has links to the Zetas, the feared armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, one of the most bloodthirsty drug smuggling organizations in Mexico.

But for Hernandez, the former pharmacy manager, the journey was worth the risks. She now lives in a cramped, rented room in West Palm Beach and sleeps in the same bed with her daughter. She is looking for full-time work.

"I didn't do this for me," she says. "I did it to improve the prospects in life for my daughter. It scared me, but I would do it again - for her."



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