3 weeks after fleeing return to Cuba fatal

Posted on Sat, Apr. 08, 2006

CUBA
3 weeks after fleeing, return to Cuba fatal

The three men shot at by Cuban border guards Wednesday were involved in
an immigrant smuggling attempt, a Cuban television show reported Friday.
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@MiamiHerald.com

The man killed Wednesday by Cuban border guards during an alleged
immigrant-smuggling attempt had left Cuba just three weeks earlier,
Cuban media reported Friday.

Geovel González Morera paid smugglers to get him and his girlfriend out
of Cuba on March 14, but he was back on Cuban shores just before dawn
Wednesday on a Florida-registered 40-foot speedboat heading to pick up
43 people, Cuban TV reported.

The Cuban Border Guard shot at the vessel as it approached the shore of
Pinar del Río in southwestern Cuba with three men aboard when it refused
orders to stop and rammed a Naval patrol boat, the Cuban newspaper
Granma said Thursday. González died, and a Cuban-American man from Miami
named Rosendo Salgado Castro was wounded.

The other survivor now in custody in Cuba, Julio Rafael Mesa Fariñas --
a Cuban American who has lived for 26 years in Miami -- told authorities
that he got involved in human smuggling to pay off a $20,000 debt. He
owes the money to smugglers who helped get his wife and child out of
Cuba to Mexico last year, and the smugglers are holding the woman and
baby at a safehouse along the Gulf of Mexico until the debt is paid, the
Cuban TV show Mesa Redonda reported Friday.

''This is the first I'm hearing of it,'' Mesa's daughter from another
relationship, Maria Watson, told The Miami Herald in a telephone
interview. ``This is all hitting me at once.''

Watson said her father, a Hialeah truck driver, left Cuba as a teenager
but travels there to see his mother. He recently married and had a baby
with a Cuban woman. The woman and baby are living in Mexico and Mesa had
moved there to be close to them, she said.

''They are going hungry in Mexico,'' Watson said.

Reached by telephone in Mexico, Mesa's wife hung up on a reporter from
The Miami Herald.

Authorities on the island allege that Mesa was part of a human smuggling
ring that charges Cubans up to $10,000 each for passage from Cuba to
Mexico. The ring, the Cuban media reported, is run by a Cienfuegos
native named Joan Alberto García, who has a Flagler Street address, but
lives in Cancún with his wife.

The Miami Herald called García's Miami home and the person who picked up
the phone said she did not know his whereabouts.

PREVIOUS CHARGES

García was indicted on federal immigrant smuggling charges in the United
States in 2002 and is a fugitive. The show said he has made about $2
million on these trips this year alone.

In all, the smuggling network made some 20 incursions involving the
pickup of 480 migrants since last year, Mesa Redonda said.

Thirteen such voyages have been spotted so far this year, the Cuban show
reported -- including eight by García's crew, the show said. Last year,
42 people died on similar trips, and 67 people were arrested in Cuba for
taking part.

On Wednesday, the operation intended to pick up 43 people who had made a
long and treacherous odyssey on foot and by bus to meet the boat on
shore in Dayaniguas inlet, the TV announcers said.

The people -- 22 men, 14 women and seven children ages 23 months to 13
years -- were left stranded without food or water for two days while
waiting for the boat. At least two of the children were hospitalized for
dehydration.

The people came from five different Cuban provinces and did not know
each other, the show said. Seventeen of them had attempted illegal
escape earlier, news presenter Arlene Rodríguez said, and four had
applied for visas from the U.S. Interests Section but were denied.

NO RESPONSE

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana said it has not been able to
independently verify the Cuban government's version of events. A
spokesman said Cuban authorities have not responded to requests for
American diplomats to have consular access to the accused smugglers,
both of whom are U.S. citizens.

Miami-Dade criminal records show that Salgado, who arrived in 1995, was
arrested last year for grand theft, when he was caught stealing from the
flower company where he worked.

Mesa, who arrived in 1980, was arrested 10 years ago for robbery, but
the case was dropped. A misdemeanor battery arrest in 1995 was dismissed.

''He's in debt,'' TV show host Reinaldo Taladrid said. ``So what does he
do? To pay the debt, he got involved in smuggling to start making money.''

Miami Herald staff writers Andrea Torres, Rebecca Dellagloria and Miami
Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.

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