The arrival of rafters coming from Cuba to the shores of Florida, in the United States, sets off alarms due to the increase in cases despite the risk that “silent exodus”, whose tragic face was seen this week with the disappearance of 9 of the 22 occupants of a wrecked raft.
The number of Cubans intercepted in large groups by the Coast Guard Since the beginning of the current fiscal year (October 1, 2020) it already has at least 536, compared to 313 in 2019 and 49 last year, in many cases in tragic shipwrecks such as this Monday.
The overloaded vessel that capsized 40 km southeast of Key west, at the southern tip of Florida, did it just the day the tropical storm Elsa crossed the center of Cuba, which shows the degree of despair felt by a good part of Cuban society.
Two cutters and helicopters from the Coast Guard The search continued today for the nine Cubans, seven men and two women, lost in turbulent waters. Strait of Florida, where many rafters have perished trying to cross it in their flight from the island.
It is “silent exodus“through Strait of Florida and in precarious vessels that has been increasing during the last year “it will not decrease, but on the contrary, it will grow,” he assured this Thursday to Efe Ramón Saúl Sánchez, president of the exile group Democracy Movement.
Shortage of supplies, repression and ineptitude of the regime
Sánchez cited the “ineptitude of the (Cuban) dictatorship, the infrastructure deterioration on the island, the pandemic and the repression continued regime “as causes of this new “silent” march of Cubans trying to reach the United States by land or sea.
The activist does not rule out that a mass migration, although “the Cuban dictatorship is very astute,” he says, and “still uses this tool as a factor of pressure and negotiation” with the government of USA, who is very concerned about the possibility of a migratory wave from the island by sea, he said.
In any case, and despite this growing illegal emigration by sea, there is no indication that it is possible to speak of a mass exodus.
“Although the numbers (of rafters intercepted) have increased in the last year compared to 2019 or 2020, they still remain low compared to the years in which the law was in force ‘dry feet / wet feet‘”, repealed in 2017, told Efe today Hansel D. Pintos, Public Affairs Officer for the Coast Guard Seventh District.
Thus, in fiscal year 2016 and 2017, 5,396 and 1,468 Cuban immigrants were intercepted by the Coast Guard, respectively.
What does exist is ongoing work by the Coast Guard to “educate immigrants about the dangers of illegal immigration along sea lanes in inappropriate vessels,” added Pintos, whose district encompasses 1.8 million square miles of maritime surveillance, including most of the Caribbean.
Straits of Florida: cementero de rafters
Pintos referred to the painful shipwreck this week and confirmed that the Coast Guard continues the search by sea and air for the nine missing.
The Coast Guard does not hide its great concern about these maritime voyages of Cubans in “precarious boats, built in a rustic way with recycled parts such as metals, motors or plastics and without first aid equipment. ”
But “people are desperate. Citizen frustration has escalated to very critical levels and they prefer to jump into the sea and try to escape the martyrdom of living on the island, “Emilio Morales, president of the consulting firm, told Efe. Hhavana Consulting Group.
“The galloping inflation has impacted the people” while the government “has suffocated” with its measures the Cuban families and “the salary is not even enough for a week,” stressed the Cuban economist.
As for the possibility of a mass exodus, He opined that it can only occur “if the Cuban government provokes it by opening the borders as it did in 1994”, when the so-called “rafter crisis” occurred, in which 50 thousand Cubans jumped into the sea to reach the coast American.
However, Morales clarified, an action of this type “could be interpreted as an act of war” by Cuba and, given the migratory problems that the Biden Administration is currently dealing with on the southern border, “I do not think it will allow this type of of blackmail by the Cuban Government “.
Possibility of a mass exodus
In Morales’ opinion, the Cuban government “no longer has popular support and is right now stumbling on its mission to reinvent itself, without a penny, losing the few lines of credit it had” and with allies such as China and Russia already closed to lend. to a “bad paying” country.
It is estimated that more than 2.5 million Cubans reside outside the largest of the Antilles, around 10 percent of its 11.2 million inhabitants.
Yuri Cardentey is one of the emigrants who left the island in 1991 with five friends in a precarious “raft” that they themselves built with license plates and screws to make the journey towards the “American dream.”
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union we imagined that an economic crisis was coming. The country had no future. We had no future and we jumped into the sea,” Cardentey, 59, explains to Efe, who finds similarities between the situation of hopelessness of Cuban society then and now.
Cardentey, today with a thriving auto paint and repair business in Miami, says that, “apart from the political factor and repression” (on the island), it is the “crisis of the Cuban economic system, disaster and chaos”, which is generating this departure of rafters.
Like Sánchez, Cardentey believes that the “situation” that precipitated the “rafters crisis“:” The economic crisis (on the island) is very strong, comparable or even worse than that of 1994, without improvement, and that is sinking, “he said.
DMZ
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