Yudeimi Rodríguez’s youngest son died in his arms. The raft in which she was traveling with her husband, Yoandri Espada, hers, her two children, and two other Cubans, “broke” on the journey. One of the companions fell into the sea and they could not rescue him. The rest drifted for four days. As she herself told América TeVé, broken in pain, her eleven-month-old baby “could not stand it and died.”
The group left the island on October 30 through the port of Mariel, the young woman said, but the precarious boat was shattered. “The waves were huge, the sea turned black, there was a lot of current.”
The rafters were rescued by a fisherman. In a video Broadcast on networks, you can see how her husband asks the approaching boat for help, with her dying and the remains of the raft surrounded by sharks.
The two deaths are added to the eight deaths of Cuban rafters that District Seven NCO Nicole Groll announced last Monday. Of these ten, seven lost their lives at the end of September after the boat in which they were making the journey capsized near Stock Island, neighboring Key West.
The team of Republican congressmen María Elvira Salazar and Mario Díaz-Balart, recently re-elected, are now managing the release of Yoandri Espada, while the other rafter was released when he had a family in Florida. While Yudeimi and her daughter received medical assistance for the dehydration conditions in which they were found.
In a video broadcast on networks, you can see how her husband asks the approaching boat for help, with her dying and the remains of the raft surrounded by sharks.
Yudeimi Rodríguez and her 11-year-old daughter Claire, who have injuries caused by the sun on their bodies, are assisted by the religious organization Hermanos de la Calle and Cuban Manuel Milanés, who urged people to support this family.
Rodríguez would like to turn back time, but accepts, through tears, that his little boy “is gone” and “we have to move on.”
The case is made public just the day the US Coast Guard confirmed the rescue by a good Samaritan of a group of 13 rafters off Elbow Cay, Bahamas, in the midst of Hurricane Nicole, which was downgraded to a tropical storm after making landfall. in Jacksonville, Fla. The migrants were transferred to the ship William Flores without “reporting injuries”, Coast Guard published On twitter.
US authorities have warned that rafters caught on the high seas will be returned to their country of origin. So far in November, the Coast Guard has repatriated 227 Cubans in four groups.
________________________
Collaborate with our work:
The team of 14ymedio is committed to doing serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time becoming a member of our journal. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
