Families despair for 40 missing at sea
Relatives are distraught about the fate of 40 loved ones, including 12
children, whose boat disappeared after leaving Cuba for South Florida in
late November.
Posted on Mon, Jan. 14, 2008
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@MiamiHerald.com
It was still dark that early morning in late November when about 40
people, including 12 children, crowded aboard a sport fishing boat that
had traveled from Florida to pick them up along Cuba's northern coast.
The sky was clear -- but the sea was a little choppy.
The Cubans, all of them from towns in Matanzas province, expected a
smooth crossing, the same trip their husbands, brothers, sisters and
other relatives had taken to get to South Florida, some as recently as
last year.
As they headed out to sea after 3 a.m., some used a phone their captain,
known only as El Grifo -- The Spigot -- handed them to call their loved
ones in Miami and Hialeah. In a matter of hours, they expected to be
together again.
They never arrived.
What happened to the people aboard the 32-foot Wellcraft vessel built
for nine -- not 40 -- remains a mystery. If it's confirmed the vessel
capsized and those aboard drowned, the tragedy would be one of the worst
since Cuban government boats in 1994 rammed and sank the 13 de Marzo
tugboat with a load of fleeing migrants -- an episode that left 41 dead.
The U.S. Coast Guard has listed the group of 40 as missing and suspects
this case is another smuggling operation, one of a growing number since
an ailing Fidel Castro ceded power to his younger brother Raúl in July 2006.
Cuban exile groups estimate thousands have died at sea since Castro rose
to power in 1959. More than 220 Cuban migrants -- including the 40 --
are believed lost or killed at sea since January 2001, according to the
U.S. Coast Guard.
DANGEROUS JOURNEYS
Coast Guard officials, frustrated by escalating smuggling operations and
tragedies at sea, have called on the exile community to speak up against
such dangerous journeys. Packed boats are a lucrative business for
smugglers, who charge up to $10,000 a person upon delivery.
If El Grifo was a smuggler, he stood to gain $400,000 on that one trip.
The news of the boat's disappearance was too much for Regla Jimenez, 55,
who died in Matanzas on Christmas Day. Jimenez, whose two sons are
already in South Florida, suffered a stroke after learning that her
grandchildren -- including a 1-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy -- and
two daughters-in-law were on the missing boat.
Although relatives contacted by The Miami Herald in Cuba and South
Florida insist they learned at the last minute of the trip and that they
knew nothing of a smuggling operation, the Coast Guard says the
relatives waited too long -- almost two weeks -- to report the missing
boat, a potentially fatal mistake.
''After 12 days, the search area would have been huge, anywhere from
Cuba to North Carolina.'' Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Chris O'Neil said.
The Miami Herald tracked down 11 relatives -- one as far away as Houston
-- from eight families of the missing to glean what may have happened.
They identified 22 of the 40 on the perilous trip. Here are their
recollections:
Luis Bazán, 40, was preparing a cargo load at Miami International
Airport on Nov. 23 when his cellphone rang at 11 a.m. It was his wife
Yusmari Rosales, 27, calling from aboard the boat, which was idling
south of Cay Sal in the southernmost Bahamas.
She was ecstatic, telling Bazán that their children, Yalon, 2, and
Yaseel, 8, were with her. Many people were seasick, she told him, but
otherwise all was well.
''She was excited, crazy with emotion because she was soon to arrive and
be free in this great country,'' Bazán said last week.
El Grifo was waiting for nightfall to make the dash north in the dark to
improve his chances of evading the Coast Guard.
The weather forecast called for generally clear skies, with a
possibility of showers. A cold front was coming from the north. Seas
were one to two feet from the Florida Keys out 60 nautical miles to the
south.
Rosales promised Bazán she would call again at 4 p.m.
She never did.
SISTER-IN-LAW ON BOAT
Ariel Cabrera, a truck driver whose brother Reniel and sister-in-law
Idania were on the boat, figures word got out in Matanzas that El Grifo,
a fisherman, was coming to pick up his family and might have room on the
boat for others.
Cabrera's sister Aranelis, who lives in the town of Perico, said that on
the eve of the voyage, Reniel mentioned that he was going to visit
friends in Cárdenas, near where the 40 Cubans were picked up and a
common departure point for rafters and smugglers.
When Jorge Pino, 42, kissed his wife Dania González goodbye she thought
nothing of it. He told her he was heading to Camagüey, some 260 miles
southeast of Matanzas, to visit relatives and that he'd be back soon.
But, in fact, he was planning to join his brother Raidel Pino in Hialeah.
Brothers Lazaro and Osmany Martínez said they didn't know their wives
and year-old babies were en route from Matanzas until relatives called
from Cuba to ask about them.
Osmany, 31, a barber in South Miami-Dade, arrived in December 2006 and
had been trying to get visas for his wife Miretsy Gomez, 27, and
1-year-old daughter, Diosanay Martínez.
''They must have organized themselves down there to be on the boat,''
said Lázaro, 33, a groundskeeper at a gated community in South
Miami-Dade. His wife Yamiris Zuñiga, 26, worked odd jobs in Cuba and
cared for their 1-year-old son Marlon Challaane.
Now the brothers have lost their wives, children -- and their mother,
who died on Christmas Day.
Most of the Florida relatives of the 40 said family members left Cuba
because conditions have not changed under Raúl Castro.
''There will never be change,'' said Danny Daniel, 27, whose wife,
Mayelín Mendoza, 33, and 4-year-old son, Danny, are missing.
On Dec. 6, the Coast Guard began to get calls -- from Bazán and others.
At first, the calls sounded more resigned than anxious -- callers
expected to be told that their relatives had been caught at sea and
would be returned to Cuba, as is usual under the U.S. wet foot/dry foot
policy that applies solely to Cubans. Had the Cubans reached U.S.
shores, they would have been able to stay -- unlike other migrants from
the Caribbean and elsewhere who face deportation.
The Coast Guard followed procedure and gave relatives a phone number to
call the congressional liaison assigned to help exiles locate family
members interdicted at sea.
By the afternoon, when the families' names didn't show up on
interdiction lists, the Coast Guard put out a call to check for a vessel
or debris and launched a plane to search the area -- 12 days after El
Grifo's boat had left Cuba.
Bazán was so ''despondent'' that Coast Guard officials who talked to him
in December thought he was ''suicidal.'' He says he was confined to a
psychiatric ward for three days.
Desperate, he chartered a plane to search the Cay Sal area on Dec. 12,
hoping to find his family somewhere in the Florida Straits.
On Friday, Bazán broke down in inconsolable tears when he played a video
of his son Yalon and the plane's search of the Cay Sal area.
''My life without my children is over,'' Bazán said repeatedly.
STILL HOPEFUL
Relatives of the 40 cling to the hope that their loved ones may be in
detention in Cuba, or perhaps had arrived in Mexico or the Bahamas and
landed behind bars. U.S. officials, however, have come up empty-handed.
''We have reached out to both Mexico and the Bahamas, and nothing's
turned up,'' said Ana Carbonell, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Lincoln
Diaz-Balart, R-Miami.
Cuban officials have insisted to the Coast Guard that they, too, have no
information on the 40.
Mario Galbán, a Miami-Dade machinist whose brother Jorge, 44, was on the
boat with his wife Yusimi Carvajal, 37, and two children, Jorge, 19, and
Julia, 10, said he suspects smugglers were involved.
''I have no details, but that money crossed hands or was promised it
probably was,'' said Galbán.
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