SPECIAL REPORT: LEAVING CUBA

By Jack Kelly USA TODAY March 10, 2000

Quest for freedom carries a price

Under the cover of night, they head to sea in a small boat. There’s no time for good-byes, only a final wave. For this desperate group of Cubans, hope is worth the risk of failure, arrest or a lonely death.

USA TODAY foreign correspondent Jack Kelly spent several days last month with a group of Cubans as they prepared to leave the island by boat for the United States. The night they left, he accompanied them to the shore and watched them depart. As a result of his reporting, Cuban police arrested Kelley and his passport was confiscated. He was released several hours later.

 CARDENAS, Cuba – Guided by the dim light of a crescent moon, nine people, one pregnant and one carrying a young child, crept from a grove of mangrove trees bordering a deserted beach and walked quickly toward shore. They carried only their allotted supplies: four boiled eggs, five apples and six bottles of water. It would be enough, they had been told, to last five days at sea.

As they left the cover of trees, they grew more afraid. Some began walking backward toward the shore to see whether anyone was watching. Two started running to the water’s edge. One woman, shaking with fright, tripped over her feet and broke her bottles on the rocky shore. Bleeding and screaming, she fell to the ground, only to be slapped in the face and kicked in the back by another woman, named Silvia. “Shut up before you give us away, you b--! Silvia hissed, pointing a finger in the woman’s face. “Do you want the police to find us? Get up or we’ll leave you behind!” The woman scrambled to her feet and joined the others now racing to the water. At a secluded point on the shore, they gathered and waited, as they had been instructed. No one spoke. No one moved. Crashing waves were the only sounds.

Seconds later, four smugglers appeared from another grove of trees, carrying on their shoulders a small aluminum boat, two oars and two inner tubes. They set the boat down, tied the inner tubes, which could be used as lifeboats in an emergency, to the rear of the boat and loaded in the oars and supplies. They had no map, no compass, no life jackets – and no motor. “They’re for amateurs,” said Raul, 29, who was running the operation. He nodded to the group and barked, “Get in.” Everyone jumped into the boat as the four men began pushing it from the shore. They moved so fast that a woman named Sayra, who was 27 and six months pregnant, fell into the water as she tried to climb in. Two of the smugglers picked her up, threw her into the boat and then swam off. Raul and another smuggler jumped in and started to row against the tide. Six minutes had passed since the group emerged from the mangroves. The time was 5:16 a.m.

Back on land, family members crouched among the mangroves and cried. There had been no chance for a goodbye hug – only a final wave and a few blown kisses. A woman named Ayleen, 49, watched tearfully as the boat carrying her 26-year old daughter and 15-month-old grandson disappeared into the darkness. “Go find your freedom, Yacqueline,” she said. “Go find the freedom you desperately desire.”

Following Elian

Every year, thousands of Cubans begin a 90-mile journey in tiny, overcrowded boats across the Florida Straits in search of freedom in the United States. Many leave from this very spot, directly south of Florida, so they can catch the strong northerly currents coming off the coast and drift into the Florida Keys five to seven days later. Just 10 weeks earlier, another mother and her son had left from here and sailed into an international incident. Six-year-old Elian Gonzalez was found clinging to an inner tube off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Thanksgiving Day after his mother and 10 others had drowned. Now two nations—the United States and Cuba –are embroiled in a dispute over whether to return him to his father in Cuba. On this shore three months later, the exodus continues. Another mother, another son. A tiny boat, made for six and crowded with 12 is leaving, filled with hope but facing unknown dangers. Four nights before Yacqueline was to leave for new life in America, the small, two-bedroom house that she and her son, Ulices, shared with her mother was abuzz. Six girlfriends were crammed into the 8-by-8-foot kitchen; sipping rum and helping Yacqueline wash clothes so she could sell them on the black market. She needed the money, she said, to rent a room in Florida when she and her son got there.

Scrubbing the clothes in buckets of water, the women worked by the light of a single bulb hanging from a frayed wire. The power went out three times, forcing them to work most of the night by candlelight. “It’s times like these when I’m reminded that I, and many other Cubans, live like peasants,” Yacqueline said. “We have no hope for the future.” We only look toward the day we can leave.” She shone the candle on a small calendar taped to the refrigerator. The preceeding days were marked with large X’s. The departure day –Feb.4 – was circled in red. One of her friends urged her to take it down. “We’ll be jailed,” Alina 28, whispered. “You’re not in America yet.”

Yacqueline knew that too well. In 1994, her father, a Communist Party official, was jailed for three weeks after being falsely accused of stealing a 50-pound sack of sugar from a factory. She paid a police official $500 to release her father, whom authorities had beaten with a tire iron, she said. This bribe wiped out the family’s savings. It forced them to live on donated food for more than a year. Determined to support her family, Yacqueline met with a local Communist Party official who had helped her friends get jobs as housekeepers in nearby tourist hotels. The official said he would help her –“for a price.” He wanted me to sleep with him,” she whispered.

Her mother, who had been helping wash the clothes, walked silently out of the kitchen. The six friends, who had been talking quietly among themselves, looked down at the floor. “It was the worst 20 minutes of my life,” Yacqueline said, also staring at the floor. He was 51 years old and a father of six. She was 21 and a virgin. Four of the six other women said they, too, had gotten jobs by doing “special favors” for party officials.

“That night, I decided I no longer wanted to live in this damned country,” Yacqueline continued. “I wanted to be free.” Since then, Yacqueline had saved “almost every penny.” Her monthly salary was 350 Cuban pesos, about $17.50, and she made an average of $45 a month in hard-currency tips from foreigners. By December, she had nearly $2,450. All she needed now was courage. On Christmas eve, she made a pilgrimage to the shrine of St.Lazaro, Cuba’s patron saint, in the city of Rincon de Guanabo outside of Havana. She prayed for an answer. Should I leave Cuba? Three days later, her father, who suffered from colon cancer, died. She said she got her answer in his final words: “Go find your freedom,” he told her. “If not for you, for Ulices.” The next day, she paid a Cuban smuggler $1,000 – half the cost of the voyage.

‘Suicide out there’

Eight hours after the boat left carrying Yacqueline, Ulices, a 79year-old widow named Guadalupe, the pregnant Sayra, two other women, four male passengers and the two smugglers, Ayleen was still on the shore, praying. If they make it safely, I will do whatever you ask,” she told God. Blanco, one of the two smugglers who had stayed behind, came up behind her. “There’s no reason to worry.” he said. He had called friends in Miami on his cell phone. They had assured him the weather was good.

Blanco had made three successful smuggling trips to Florida. He said he had loaned Raul $4,000 to buy the 16 foot aluminum boat. He had faith in Raul, a former construction worker, even though this was his first smuggling operation. “He’s strong and has a cool head. There’s little that can rattle him,” Blanco told Ayleen. “Besides, there are not whitecaps today.” But less than 24 hours later, the clear skies started to turn dark. Seagulls began flying inland, and fishermen were returning to shore. Something is stirring, they said, pointing toward the sky. Then the local marina issued a bulleting: An unexpected storm was moving into the Florida Straits.

By early afternoon, gusts of 33 mph were recorded at a Cuban Coast Guard station. Officials ordered boats back to port. “Where did this come from?” Blanco yelled into his cell phone from the shore to a friend in Miami. Three-foot-high waves started crashing against a nearby seawall. Tree branches snapped like twigs, and residents along the shore began nailing down their shutters. The winds proved too much for one rafter who had set off alone to Florida. After two days at sea, a 41-year-old Cuban named Joaquin was forced to return to shore. His skin was parched from the sun, his mouth swollen from dehydration and his hands covered with blisters from rowing his six-by-six-foot raft. He collapsed on the rocky shore. Heavy winds had broken his raft –a wooden shipping pallet – and ripped apart the sails he had sewn together from a white bedsheet and a small sugar sack.” “I tempted fate too much,” he said. It’s suicide out there.”

‘The end was near'

Twelve miles out at sea, the passengers in Yacqueline’s boat were fighting for their lives. “Raul kept yelling, ‘Hold on! Hold on!’” Silvia, 31, recalled. “We knew we were in trouble. We knew the end was near.” Six-foot-high waves were washing over the boat and tossing it “like a toy,” she said. Some of the passengers cupped their hands to try to bail the water. But it was useless, more kept pouring in. We just held onto the sides and to each other,” one of the passengers Roberto, 26, said. “The boat was rocking. We were tipping.”

Suddenly, one wave propelled the back of the boat into the air, catapulting Ulices out of Yacqueline’s arms and into the water. Yacqueline screamed. She rose to jump in after him. Ignacio, another passenger, pushed her back down. He reached overboard, grabbed the child’s arm and yanked him into the boat. “Tie him to the tube! Tie him to the tube!” Raul yelled from behind them. He then pointed to another passenger, the widow Guadalupe. She had covered her face with her hands. She was crying. They couldn’t hear what Raul was saying. The winds sounded like a tornado and the waves crashed down like thunder, drowning out his words, Silvia said. A wave hit the right side of the boat, throwing Guadalupe and another woman out the other side, Roberto said. It was the last anyone saw of them.

Seconds later, another wave hit the boat, knocking Ignacio, Yacqueline and Ulices into the Water. Ignacio struggled to stay afloat and to keep the child’s heat above water, Silvia said. Yacqueline, who didn’t know how to swim, brought her arms as if trying to climb out of the water. She opened her mouth to scream but swallowed seawater instead. She never saw Ulices in the water behind her. Then, “they all disappeared,” Silvia said. A third wave came barreling down on the boat, breaking it in half and dumping the seven remaining passengers overboard. Several tried desperately to tie themselves onto the inner tubes or hold onto the oars. Sayra, the woman who was six months pregnant, was panicking. Raul tried to grab her, but she “was swallowed by a wave,” Roberto said. “She went down screaming.”

The six survivors –Silvia, three male passengers and the two smugglers –hung onto the inner tubes for nearly five hours. Finally, a Cuban Coast Guard cutter spotted the five men and one woman stranded in the raging seas. They were brought aboard and handcuffed. It had been at least 36 hours since they set out from shore. One guard laughed when he told them they had never made it out of Cuba’s territorial waters.

Stripped and beaten

In a suburb south of Havana stands Villa Marista, the headquarters of Cuba’s State Security. A 30-foot-tall metal sculpture of an AK-47 assault rifle greets visitors at the main gate. Behind it are several buildings made of cinder blocks and painted blue. They are surrounded by guard towers and razor wire. This is the place, local residents say, where the government takes people it wants to “disappear.” The five male survivors –three passengers and the two smugglers—were brought here after dark. The other survivor, Silvia, was detained at a police station in Cardenas and released.

Cuban officials do not usually arrest people trying to leave the island by boat. But because of the international publicity given the Elaine Gonzalez case, the Cuban government appears to be taking a harder line. Cuban Officials, eager to show that the island’s 11 million people are firmly behind Castro, have also been organizing daily demonstrations to extol the virtues of communism and demand Elian’s return.“ One boy has rewritten the policy,” Roberto said. “Because of him and his supporters in Miami, we all suffer.”

Four of the five men taken to Villa Marista were released after 48 hours. In separate interviews, they all said they had been stripped, handcuffed, hung by their ankles and interrogated by Cuban officials for up to three hours. Their ankles were swollen, scarred and bruised.“They wanted to know why we wanted to embarrass Cuba by leaving,” Roberto said.

Raul was kept behind, and his whereabouts are still unknown.“We heard screams coming from his cell all night long. We heard the sounds of baseball bats,” another survivor, Juan Carlos, 28, said. “We knew what was going on.”Villa Marista officials interviewed the next day said they had no record of the five men being arrested. They also denied that any prisoners are beaten there.

Finally free

Four days after the boat took off and just hours after the men were released from detention, all the survivors except Raul reunited on the shore at sunrise for a clandestine memorial service. They read verses from the Bible and bowed their heads in a moment of silence for their drowned companions. Then, one by one, they said they were more determined than ever to leave Cuba. “We will pursue our freedom as long as it takes,” Silvia said. “We owe it to our friends.”

Yacqueline’s mother, Ayleen, lad a small wreath decorated with mementos of the dead on the water. There were handkerchiefs, plastic crosses and a baby pacifier that had belonged to Ulices.As they watched the wreath drift out to sea, Ayleen told the small group how her daughter had dreamed of drowning only days before the trip. Yacqueline had said that if that happened, her mother could take solace in the fact that she’d be “out of Castro’s grip.”

“Sleep peacefully, my child,” Ayleen said tearfully as the wreath disappeared from sight. “You’re finally free."

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