The escape route for Cubans through Cancún, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, was reactivated. In 15 days, Navy personnel “rescued” 27 rafters and handed them over to the National Migration Institute (INM) for deportation. In that same period, two boats were abandoned in the Caribbean, the last one, this Thursday in Defines beach, a tourist area with close surveillance.
“The Cubans who arrived at the Mirador beach were brought coyotes“, he explains to 14ymedioJavier Robles, a fisherman who rents a catamaran to tourists to practice snorkeling. “It is an area guarded day and night by tourist and municipal police and that no one detected a motorboat, there is no other explanation.”
Robles, who knows the area, was informed by his relatives of patrols before 5 a.m. on Thursday and “by that time the boat was on the beach,” but it was not until after 7 a.m. that the Tourist Police showed up. in the place. “They arrived, they saw and they left until several hours later naval personnel arrived to protect, according to the boat.”
In the place they found some sneakers, life jackets, a large empty plastic bag with the Mary brand, which is normally used by emigrants to protect something: food or documents; two fuel cans. “In Cancun there are many Cubans with legal residence who have set up businesses, so I doubt that these rafters will be found by the authorities,” explains the fisherman.
Until the first fortnight of August, the local authorities registered 53 rescues of rafters and with those reported in the last 15 days, there are already 80. “They are desperate to leave Cuba, at this point many people are going to start drinking here,” tells Graviel García, a Cuban originally from Havana who is waiting for a response to his request for asylum in Mexico.
Before the pandemic, says García, “there were departures through Pinar del Río,” which is 220 miles from Cancun and 211 miles from Isla Mujeres, two of the points that use smugglers and they are marked in the report Sea inside: migrants and castaways at sea, prepared by the United Nations. “I never contacted the coyote, I do know that they charged $7,000, a lot for that danger.”
In November 2020, a group of 22 Cuban rafters, among whom there were three minors, decided to leave the island and take the Cancun route. They left through Isla de la Juventud and their whereabouts were never known, as well as that of three boatmen who were transporting them.
Robles, who has dedicated himself to fishing for 27 years, knows of people who in a short time go from a boat to a launch. “We are sullen and if we commit it, we are not going to confess the sin, but there are some companions who they fish at night, what? Needless to say. Suddenly fishermen’s boats from Cancun appear in Cuba and nobody knows anything.”
At the end of June, the Harbor Master in Cancun reported a missing fishing boat called the dog whose destination was Playa del Carmen. Ten days after the report, the boat and its crew appeared on the island, as confirmed by Captain Daniel Antonio Maass Michel in the nautical notice 019/2022, but nothing more was detailed.
Robles revealed another arrival point for rafters in Quintana Roo: “The mafia is exploiting the route through the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. There is no surveillance in that area.”
Meanwhile, the sea route of escape most used by Cubans to reach the United States is Florida. This Friday the Coast Guard Service returned 163, including three minors, who were trying to reach that territory illegally by sea.
The Cuban Ministry of the Interior confirmed that the migrants were returned by the port of Orozco, in Bahía Honda, Artemisa, last Sunday “as a result of a group of illegal departures across the maritime border.” Since the beginning of the fiscal year in October 2021 to date, 5,421 rafters have been repatriated.
This Friday, the Coast Guard reported that a raft with five people was intercepted before reaching Key West. While the Border Patrol reported that 15 Cubans were taken into custody after making landfall in Islamorada.
#breaking @USCG #YOU crews stopped 5 people, Friday, from illegally entering the country on an unsafe vessel, without safety equipment, south of #Key West. There were no reported medical concerns. #DontTaketoTheSea @USEmbCuba pic.twitter.com/wGiEIRKZNp
— USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) September 9, 2022
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