June 18, 2008
Cuba blames 2 deaths in botched smuggling on American laws
By Ray Sanchez | South Florida Sun-Sentinel Cuba Bureau
7:16 PM EDT, June 18, 2008

HAVANA - Cuba is blaming American immigration laws for the deaths of an 11-year-old boy and a teenager during a botched smuggling operation off the island's northern coast.

The state press and dissident journalists said Wednesday that smugglers fleeing a Cuban coast guard vessel rammed and overturned a rickety boat loaded with Florida-bound migrants.

The victims of the failed smuggling venture were identified as Yudersi Rosabal Rodriguez, 19, of the central city of Sagua la Grande, and 11-yearold Jorge Luis Nunez Sanchez, who hailed from the rural community of La Sierra. The incident occurred Monday off the northern coast of Villa Clara province in central Cuba.

The official press said smugglers in a go-fast boat, which was supposed to pick up the 20 migrants, rammed the wooden boat in order to distract the approaching Cuban coast guard, which turned its attention to the migrants in the water.



One survivor said the smugglers, who escaped in the go-fast boat, charged $10,000 a head for the trip. Dissident journalists said two survivors were hospitalized in Santa Clara – one woman's arm was severed by a propeller, another suffered intestinal injuries from contact with a propeller.

"Once again the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act and double standard of the American government leads to the death of innocent people," said the Communist Party daily Granma, referring to U.S. laws allowing Cuban who reach American soil to remain the in the country. Cubans found at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard are usually repatriated.

The boy's mother, Vivian Sanchez Cabrerra, was also on the boat and survived. The state press said she "wept uncontrollably" for the loss of her only son.

"I held Jorge Luis very close to me," he told Granma. "He was the center of attention through the whole journey... He was next to me in the front when the other boat rammed us and we overturned."

In the water, she said, she noticed a lifejacket nearby but her son had slipped from her arms.

"I never saw him again," she said. "I lost the only thing I had in life."

Dissident journalists in Santa Clara and Sagua la Grande said they had not been able to locate the survivors





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