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Family's Hope For Reunion May Be Lost With Cuba Boat

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By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ, The Associated Press

Published: January 2, 2008

HIALEAH - This was supposed to be the year Luis Bazan celebrated New Year's with his wife and young sons in the United States.

Bazan left Cuba for Florida nearly two years ago on a hand-wrought wooden boat. On Nov. 24, his family and about 40 others, including a dozen young children, boarded a speedy fishing boat to make the same journey.

Bazan spoke to his wife on a cell phone she borrowed shortly after they began the trip across the Florida Straits. That was the last he heard from her.

"My only drop of hope is that the boat landed somewhere in the Bahamas and that they haven't been able to call," Bazan said recently as he sat in his one-room Hialeah apartment, tracing his fingers over photos of his boys, 8-year-old Yasel and 2-year-old Yarlon.

More likely, Bazan's wife and sons met the same fate as thousands of other Cuban migrants who have perished at sea trying to reach the United States since Cuban President Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

Relatives have reported nearly 70 migrants aboard three boats have died or been lost in the Florida Straits in the past two months, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

"In recent months and recent days, we've seen a very alarming loss of life," said Chris O'Neil, a Coast Guard spokesman.

Tragedies All Too Familiar

Days before Christmas, another high-speed boat carrying up to 25 people capsized a few miles off the northern coast of Cuba. The Cuban government said two people died.

One of the dead was identified by a Tampa family member as Yosvanny Vera Alvarez, 29, from Aguada de Pasajeros in Cienfuegos in central Cuba.

Family members in the United States told the media the casualty numbers were higher and blamed Cuban law enforcement. O'Neil said investigators have little to go on, because the U.S. relatives aren't talking to them.

On Saturday, the Coast Guard suspended a 48-hour search for yet another boat with at least three migrants aboard.

U.S. officials link the increase in apparent casualties to an uptick of Cubans leaving the island.

In 2007, U.S. officials stopped about 3,200 Cubans at sea, up from about 2,300 the year before. It was the largest number of interdictions since the 1994 rafter crisis that saw 37,000 Cubans attempt to reach Florida after Castro briefly opened the island's borders.

O'Neil attributes the recent exodus to a variety of factors, including months of mild weather, high-tech smuggling operations and concern among Cubans over the future of their country without the ailing Castro. The communist leader, who has long been a thorn in the side of U.S. presidents, ceded power to his brother last year.

Under U.S. policy, Cubans who reach U.S. land are generally allowed to stay under the "wet-foot, dry-foot policy." Without Castro, Cubans could lose their preferential treatment if relations between the two countries improve.

Seeking A Better Life

Bazan wasn't thinking about politics when he left his small village in Matanzas province in 2006. "I came for everything, for freedom and to drag my family out of miserable poverty," he said.

He found an apartment in Hialeah, a Miami suburb, and a job unloading packages at a cargo transport company. In his free time he sent packages home and waited for his family's arrival. "I would make videotapes every month, playing and telling them stories so that they could see me. I left my little one when he was about 6 months, and he could pick me out of a photo album," Bazan said.

Eventually he secured a spot for his family on a high-speed boat chartered by a fellow Cuban immigrant. Bazan and other relatives of those on that boat said they never paid for the trip, which would be a federal crime. The trip was not expected to take more than a day in clear weather.

Bazan was so sure his family completed the crossing and was being processed by U.S. immigration authorities that he didn't call the Coast Guard for nearly two weeks, he said.

Once he did call authorities, the Coast Guard searched the route but found nothing. A week later, Bazan chartered a small plane to fly over the route but also saw no signs of the boat.

O'Neil said it's unlikely those on the boat are alive.

"We need the community to say, 'This is not acceptable anymore,'" O'Neil said. "'It's not acceptable to continue to pay people to subject our relatives, our loved ones and our friends to these dangerous conditions. It's no longer acceptable to see this loss in life.'"

Information from McClatchy Newspapers was used in this report.

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