About thirty people tried to set sail on three rustic boats from El Cepem, near Havana. AFP photo
They call it Terminal Threebut it is not an airport with international departures but a rocky beach in the humble town of El Cepem, near Havana, where the rafters plunge into the sea trying to reach the coast of Florida, in the United States, in the midst of migration. exodus that Cuba is experiencing.
About 30 people tried to set sail August 29 in three rustic boats from this country of wooden houses with a dirt road leading to the sea, 30 km west of Havana.
The attempt ended with a protest from residents who clashed with police, trying to stop them from removing the rafts, half a dozen witnesses told AFP.
“Whoever wants to go, let him gowe are experiencing tremendous hunger, a tremendous need, “complains a 49-year-old neighbor, who prefers not to reveal her name.
“Terminal Three”
Even if emigrating by raft is illegalis “happening all over Cuba”, says the woman looking at the sea. “This is what they call Terminal Three”, she alludes ironically to the international station of the José Martí airport in Havana.
The brawl in broad daylight erupted when police confronted residents who requested the presence of an authority to allow the rafters to leave.
It ended with at least four inmatespeople injured by beatings and the seizure of wooden boats, a 32-year-old housewife whose husband was arrested and released that night told AFP.
The AFP has requested official information, but to date there has been no response.
In Isabela de Sagua, another village frequented by rafters in the central province of Villa Clara, a boat with six people has been missing at sea since 28 August. On Thursday, the state-run Prensa Latina news agency reported that border guard boats, a drone and military helicopters continued their searches.
This is another case of inflatable boats with an uncertain destination. At least 61 people have died trying to cross the Florida Strait since October. (166 kilometers), as reported on August 12 in a US Coast Guard statement.
In the summer of 1994, more than 35,000 Cubans left for Miami in what became known as the “Crisis of the beams”, the largest maritime emigration of the island. But since Havana re-established relations with Washington in 2015, there weren’t that many people left.
The trigger for the new wave of emigrants was the elimination of the visa in November for Cubans traveling to Nicaragua.
Fly to that Central American country and take the continental route to the border with the United States It’s a trip that can cost over $ 12,000a luxury that few Cubans can afford.
According to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a record number of nearly 179,000 Cubans illegally entered their country between October and Julymost of them by land.
Another 5,000 They were intercepted at sea between October and August by the Coast Guard, halfway through the summer, when the weather conditions favor navigation in this area.
The sea “is a route that perhaps requires fewer resources and therefore speaks of an emergency migration“Juan Carlos Narváez, a researcher at the Mexico-based NGO Applied Multidisciplinary Research, Social Laboratory, told AFP.
Without resources
It is a migration “made by Cubans who have fewer resources and networks to migrate” and they do so despite the danger they run, as well as the high possibility of being expelled by the US authorities, adds the expert.
the Cuban government denounces the failure to comply with 20,000 annual visas emigration under the agreements with the United States, whose consulate in Havana only reopened in May after being closed for four years.
Cuba faces the worst economic crisis of the last three decades, with shortages of food, medicine, fuel and daily blackoutsfollowing the US embargo and the effects of the pandemic.
All this tensed the atmosphere. Demonstrations in provincial centers are becoming more and more frequent, something unthinkable before the historic protests of 11 July 2021.
The people of El Cepem, who have been settling irregularly for 20 years, he says being irritated by the harsh conditions you live in and the lack of attention from the authorities.
“Since they came to see the question of boats, they could have come to see what is needed, what is needed,” one of the witnesses said angrily.
AFP agency
PB
Letizia Pineda
Source: Clarin
