Some Cuban expats going back home

Miami Herald

Posted on Tue, Jun. 10, 2008
Some Cuban expats going back home
By MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Jorge's friends at work call him the ``Sixth Hero.''

Folks here figure Jorge must be the secret spy who got away. Why else would he have returned to Cuba after living in the United States for six years? The ''sixth hero'' reference relates to the five Cuban intelligence agents the Cuban government nicknamed ''the Five Heroes'' who are serving long U.S. prison sentences.

Despite the freedom Jorge enjoyed and the ability to earn a better living as a school custodian in Miami Beach, Jorge returned to Cuba in 2002 to face a government that mistrusted him, a year of probation and friends that assume he is a member of the intelligence service. He said he is one of a growing number of émigrés who after years of living abroad, yearn for the sounds and familiarity of home.

Either for love or family, or because they never felt quite at home, they pack a few things and come back to a country where they make in a month what they used to earn in an hour.

Jorge says he is now like a TV mute button -- because every time he walks into a room full of Cubans, everyone stops talking.

''The government here thinks you are CIA, and the people think you are state security who went to the United States and came back after completing your mission,'' said Jorge, a 47-year-old guitarist. ``The others just think you are crazy for coming back. But, you know, every now and then someone visiting from Miami passes by my house and asks me, `I want to come back, too. How did you do it?'''

It was not easy. Just like leaving Cuba legally is filled with bureaucratic red tape, so is returning.

Cubans who leave for longer than 11 months are considered permanent residents of someplace else, so they must report to immigration offices here and reapply for identity papers. They are forced to report monthly to immigration for a year until they are cleared.

It's unclear whether the option to return is available at all for the people who left Cuba illegally without the required exit papers.

''I went to immigration and said, `I'm not going back. Like it or not, I'm staying,''' he said. ``They did not take it so well.''

The Cuban government does not publish statistics on people who return to the island. It's clearly a tiny portion of the tens of thousands of Cubans who leave each year for the United States and Europe. At least 20,000 Cubans migrate legally to the United States every year, and the vast majority return only to visit.

Well-known Havana blogger Yoani Sánchez said when she returned to Cuba from Zurich four years ago with her 8-year-old son in tow, friends advised her to rip up her passport, so the Cuban government could not force her to leave again.

In her Generation Y blog, she describes how she showed up at a provincial immigration office and was simply told to get in line -- behind all the other ``crazies.''

''A man who returned from Spain with his wife and daughter after living there five years told me, `Don't worry, they are going to try to force you to leave, but you have to refuse. The worst thing that happens is that they detain you for two weeks, but the jail is right here, and the mattresses are quite fine,''' she wrote.

Sánchez never did have to test the jail mattresses.

''People think it's weird for you to return, but in any other place in the world, leaving for a few years and coming back is the most normal thing,'' she said in a telephone interview. ``It's Cuban law that makes it absurd.''

She lived in Switzerland for two years with her husband and child, but came back for family reasons. She has encountered several people who did the same thing.

''Some people come back, because they had elderly parents who were alone. Some never adapted where they were or had property issues to deal with here,'' she said. ``Some come back for love, because they never could get their family member out of Cuba.''

Jorge left Cuba in 1996 with his wife when they won the visa lottery, and landed first in Oregon, where they stayed for two years. The couple eventually moved to South Florida, but never felt comfortable, in part because they found the exile community too politicized. Jorge liked the freedom, the right to speak out in public, and still misses the polite manners and cleanliness of the streets. But as a musician, he grew weary of mopping floors and washing dishes.

''It was hard to integrate,'' he said. ``I think I always knew I would come back. For me, it had nothing to do with politics. It has to do with being Cuban, the love I have for my people and my land.''

In 2002, the couple brought $20,000 in savings back to Havana and returned to stay, moving back to the home where Jorge's mother-in-law lives. They used the money to renovate the home, but the marriage was on the rocks and did not last.

Jorge's ex stayed in the renovated house, and he now lives in a tiny studio on the same property, a bit worse off than he did in Miami Beach. He makes a decent enough living off tips playing the guitar at a local tourist restaurant and has no regrets.

Andy Gomez, senior provost at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said the cases of returnees are isolated. But 20 years ago, it was virtually unheard of.

''Some people left loved ones behind and just miss them. Others just can't psychologically adjust to a free society,'' Gomez said. ``The longer you live in that system, the more difficult it is to break the psychological barrier.

``You are trapped in two systems, so what do you do? You revert to the old.''

Katrin Hansing, the associate director of Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute, said in the dozen years she lived in Cuba, she met about nine people who had returned from living abroad. Most did so because they longed for a sense of community and could not fit in to the South Florida rat race, she said.

''There is a tremendous pressure to come here and make it; to go back is seen as failure,'' Hansing said. ``They feel weird. It's a tough decision and an internal struggle. When they go back, they keep a very low profile in Cuba. It breaks the myth that people come here and find bliss. Neither place is paradise.''

If the Cuban government made the process easier, she said, there would probably be more of them.

For Silvia, the daughter of government officials who lived a comfortable life in Cuba, the decision to return to the island after six months in the United States was easy: she ran out of money and had nowhere to go.

''I hate Fidel Castro, but does that mean I should work in a cafeteria?'' she said. ``I am 44 years old, and the first and only time in my life I went hungry was in the United States. Here, I live in a four-bedroom house and have a car. Over there, I had to live in an apartment the size of a table.''

Silvia did not suffer the bureaucratic hassles the others endured, because she was in South Florida and Los Angeles for less than 11 months.

''Coming back was the easiest decision I ever made. I had $20 and what was I going to do with that?'' she said. ``It was a question of simple mathematics.''

Once her paperwork was processed, the Cuban government told Sánchez, the blogger, she can never leave again. That is not an issue for her -- at least not now.

''I want to live many more years here, but I am not closed to anything,'' Sánchez said. ``I don't believe in false patriotism. I am a citizen of the world, and I feel happy anywhere. For now, I'm good here.''

Jorge says he is glad he came home, too.

''I have a lot of nice memories of Oregon,'' he said. ``It's a very beautiful place. But I always knew I was coming back.''

Cuban Reggaeton star Elvis Manuel feared dead

Telemundo and MSNBC
Reggaeton star Elvis Manuel feared dead
Mother returned to Cuba after 17 seek to escape island in skimpy raft
Telemundo and MSNBC.com
updated 11:45 a.m. PT, Mon., April. 14, 2008

MIAMI - The anti-Castro reggaeton star Elvis Manuel was missing and feared dead Monday, a week after he and 16 other refugees sought to flee the Communist island on a raft, family members and refugee advocates said.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued Irioska María Nodarse, Elvis Manuel’s mother, who manages his musical group, and 13 other people in the Florida Straits on Wednesday, two weeks after they left Pinar Del Rio seeking to make the passage to Florida. Five others, including Elvis Manuel, 19, one of Cuba’s biggest musical stars, could not be found and were presumed dead after rescue efforts were called off over the weekend.

Twelve of the 14 survivors, including Irioska María Nodarse, were returned to Cuba on Saturday; the two others, believed to have been the group’s U.S.-based smugglers, were in custody.

Two other musicians, Carlos Rojas Hernandez, who performs as DJ Carlitos, and Alejandro Rodriguez Lopez, known as DJ Jerry, were also reported to have been on the raft. It was not clear Monday whether they were among the repatriated survivors.

Last week, after it became known that Elvis Manuel was missing, dozens of Cuban-Americans held vigils in Miami, and Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., called on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration officials not to repatriate the rescued refugees.

‘Obviously, they’ve been repressed’
Besides expressing concern for Elvis Manuel, Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the Cuban advocacy group Democracy Movement, said he feared for the safety of the 14 who were repatriated.

“The Cuban government has indeed gone into a concert that Elvis Manuel was conducting and ended the concert with tear gas and other kinds of proceedings, so obviously they’ve been repressed," Sanchez said.

Music producers and executives involved in reggaeton, an infectious Latin-flavored fusion of reggae, dancehall, hip hop and electronica, said Elvis Manuel could expect to launch a lucrative career if he made it to the United States. His recent singles “La Tuba” and “La Mulata” both became hits on U.S.-based music-streaming and video sites, even though he has never performed in this country.

In a posting on his MySpace page, Elvis Manuel said shortly before he left that he had been approached by several U.S. record producers eager to work with him. But in a recent interview, he frequently expressed frustration with his confinement to Cuba, having been quoted as complaining, “My music is everywhere, but I don’t have a cent to buy something to eat.”

Javier “Voltaje” Fernández, owner of Metamorphosis Music and Production, who worked with Elvis Manuel on his recent single “Esa Mujer,” described the singer as a “simple, kind person” devoted to his mother.

“Everything he does is for her, and his biggest hope is to get her out one day,” Fernández told The Miami Herald.

Hundreds of fans had left messages of concern and sorrow on Elvis Manuel’s MySpace page Monday.

“We are asking God that you are well,” wrote one fan. “I have faith that you are well and that you will achieve what want in Miami.”

“The love of all Cubans is with you,” wrote another. “We support you until the last moment and we ask God that you are here soon.”
Alex Johnson of msnbc.com, Telemundo affiliate WSCV-TV of Miami and NBC affiliate WTVJ of Miami contributed to this report.

Cuban Reggaeton musician missing at sea

Miami Herald
Posted on Sun, Apr. 13, 2008

Missing reggaeton star's mom details trip
By JENNIFER LEBOVICH
A few hours into a trip that promised to bring them to the shores of South Florida, the boat carrying Cuban reggaeton star Elvis Manuel and 18 others started to take on water.

They started bailing water furiously, trying to keep the boat afloat under a dark sky.

Mother and son were separated as the rain pounded down and the wind roiled the sea.

'My son yelled at me, `Mami!, Mami!,' and I called back, 'Elvis, come to me,' '' said Irioska María Nodarse.

She lost sight of him in the choppy water -- he is presumed missing at sea.

On Sunday, Nodarse gave The Miami Herald the first detailed account of the ill-fated effort to escape from Cuba so her son could ''realize his dream'' of musical stardom.

In a telephone interview from Havana, Nodarse said the boat capsized in choppy seas in the Florida Straits, dumping all 19 people into the water.

Nodarse, who was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard along with 13 others, was returned to Cuba on Saturday where she is desperate for news about her son's fate. She holds out hope that he is still alive somewhere, either on a boat or an island. The Coast Guard said Sunday that it has no new information on Elvis Manuel's whereabouts.

''I don't really know what happened, but my heart tells me that my son is alive,'' she said, speaking in a calm tone in Spanish.

The voyage began on the evening of April 7, a week ago Monday, she said. The group left on a 25-foot boat, organized and paid for in Miami.

TURN FOR THE WORST

According to Nodarse, the trip proceeded uneventfully at first. Then the engine broke down and the boat began filling with water. Someone lifted what she described as a lid, only causing the water to come in faster. Everyone was bailing out water, including her son. Then the boat overturned, throwing everyone into the cold water.

Nodarse said she saw a big shadow, something she thought was either a wave or a boat. That's when she lost sight of her son.

The 14 survivors managed to cling to the overturned catamaran. They ate gasoline-soaked crackers and drank from water bottles that had packed while they waited to be rescued.

It wasn't until Wednesday morning -- two days later -- that the crew of a passing cargo ship spotted the group about 50 miles south of Key West. Elvis Manuel and four others were still missing.

The ship's crew rescued the migrants and summoned the U.S. Coast Guard, whose helicopters then searched the waters.

It's unclear how quickly the survivors told authorities that Elvis Manuel and four others were missing.

The Coast Guard says they gave officials conflicting stories.

Nodarse admits the group lied to the Coast Guard, saying two boats were initially involved.

On Sunday, she said they withheld information from the officials on the Coast Guard cutter because of pressure from the two suspected smugglers on the boat.

She said the pair wanted to create the impression that they had rescued the group. As a result, she added, they told officials their original boat had capsized, and that they had been rescued by another boat -- the vessel they were found clinging to.

''It was a lie due to pressure from the pilots,'' she said.

Coast Guard officials on Sunday expressed regret that the migrants misled searchers because they lost valuable time. ''If there was an opportunity to say 19 people were on the vessel, they should do it when we are talking to them,'' said Chief Petty Officer Dana Warr, a Coast Guard spokesman.

Nodarse, 43, said her son is 18. Friends in Miami had said that Elvis Manuel is 19. His full name is Elvis Manuel Martínez Nodarse, but he is known as Elvis Manuel.

His mother said the voyage was a smuggling operation, designed to bring her son to the United States to expand his music career.

Elvis Manuel is a recent addition to the Cuban reggaeton scene. He had two hits in Cuba last year, La Tuba and La Mulata.

CHASING A DREAM

''We were leaving Cuba not because we have any political problems with the government,'' she said. ``We were leaving Cuba because he wanted to realize his dream.''

She claimed to have a lot of information about who helped arrange the trip but she wouldn't discuss the details until she knows what happened to her son.

''It was a trip organized and paid for in Miami,'' she said.

While Nodarse and 11 survivors were repatriated on Saturday, the two crew members who are the suspected smugglers were turned over to Border Patrol officials, the Coast Guard said.

Nodarse said that Elvis Manuel's fellow musicians Carlos Rojas Hernández, who goes by ''DJ Carlitos,'' and Alejandro ''DJ Jerry'' Rodríguez Lopez, also were returned to Cuba.

Although the search for Elvis Manuel has been suspended, the Coast Guard has asked crews on cutters and aircraft that patrol the Florida Straits, the Gulf of Mexico and other waters to be on the lookout for him and any others.

''There's the possibility they're alive,'' Warr said. ``We don't know where they are or where they could possibly drift to. It's unfortunate they've taken their lives into their own hands.''

More Cubans abandoning communist island in 'silent exodus'

AFP (Agence France Presse)/Yahoo

More Cubans abandoning communist island in 'silent exodus'

by Patrick LescotSun Apr 13, 10:12 PM ET

Despite a dizzying array of reforms since Raul Castro took the helm of Cuba's government, 2008 looks to be a record year for emigration, as inhabitants abandon the communist island in droves.

In the first half of the US fiscal year, which began on October 1, almost 3,000 Cubans tried to reach US shores by crossing the shark-infested Florida Straits, according to the US Interests Section in Havana. The number represents a 21 percent increase over the previous year.

Some Cubans are abandoning the island of some 11 million inhabitants legally; Others leave illegally, crowded on smugglers' fastboats. Almost all are heading to the islands nearby arch-enemy, the United States.

Illegal emigrants -- who are returned to Cuba by US authorities if picked up at sea, but get to stay in the United States if they reach US soil -- are joined another 20,000 Cubans to whom the Interests Section grants legal immigrant visas here every year, under the immigration accords Havana and Washington struck in 1994 and 1995.

And to their total one can add some 10,000 who hand themselves to US authorities at the Mexican border.

US authorities estimate that some 35,000 Cubans will arrive to stay this year in the United States, which grants them immediate residency and working rights for fleeing communism. It does not do the same for Chinese or Vietnamese immigrants.

Cuba charges that the US policy granting Cubans special benefits encourages dangerous and potentially deadly illegal migration.

The number of Cubans who additionally are departing for Europe and Latin American countries is not known.

Far from tapering off, what often is described as a "silent exodus" has actually picked up since Raul Castro took the reins of government -- officially as president in February, and for over a year as interim leader before then -- although his government has introduced a steady stream of minor reforms aimed at eliminating unpopular restrictions and boosting economic efficiency.

With calm weather at sea, illegal departures by sea were up sharply in February and March, from 219 to 412, US data show. Most of those picked up at sea are between 19 and 35, US Interests Section figures show.

Indeed, fully 70 percent of Cubans who made the crossing to the United States did so with smugglers, paying 8,000-10,000 dollars per person, the section's data showed.

Witnesses say the smugglers' craft sometimes even set out in broad daylight from isolated locations including on the Island of Youth, witnesses say.

In addition, the United States now is stepping up a family reunification program for Cubans who want to go live with US-based relatives. Paperwork that had been taking up to seven to 10 years now can take as little as a few weeks. There are some 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, including immigrants and their US-born descendants.

Many of them send remittance funds back to Cuba to help their families make ends meet; Cubans earn an average of the equivalent of less than 20 dollars a month and those living abroad send home about one billion dollars a year.

Earlier this month, access to appliances such as microwaves and computers was just the latest of some traditional "bans" to be dumped by Raul Castro, 76, five weeks after taking over permanently from his 81-year-old brother Fidel, who did not seek reelection.

The Raul Castro government also has dropped its controversial ban on Cubans staying in hotels reserved for the tourists who generate the lion's share of the Caribbean island's hard currency. Some rights groups had dubbed the policy "tourist apartheid."

The change is expected to be welcomed by Cubans living abroad who come home for visits and want to treat relatives to hotel stays, although locals are unlikely to be stampeding for rooms that can cost up to 300 dollars a night.

The government also has moved to try to boost farm output with some small reform steps, and said it would allow Cubans who are renting homes from state employers to gain title to them that can be passed on to their heirs.

On April 14, all Cubans for the first time will be allowed to sign contracts for cell (mobile) phones, and will be able to reach friends and relatives in the United States and beyond.

Cuba watchers say there is likely a short-term political benefit of allowing greater economic openness, though they also warn many changes in the Americas' only centrally-controlled, one-party regime could build pressure for more change than the government is prepared to allow.

The Deadly Road Through Mexico

Miami New Times
The Deadly Road Through Mexico
When Cubans leave their homeland, things can get lots worse.
By Francisco Alvarado , Russell Cobb , and Paul Knight
Published: January 10, 2008

Early in the day this past July 19, Luis Lázaro Lara Morejón left his sunny oceanside room at the Solymar hotel in Cancún to buy groceries at a small market nearby. The tall, heavy-set 30-year-old Cuban exile from Miami was accompanied by his pretty, young Mexican girlfriend, María Elena Carrillo Sáenz.

The lovers passed the two huge pools and a beachfront clubhouse and bar, then walked down a stone-paved path to the Solymar's main building before exiting the imposing, Aztec-style front entrance onto Kukulcán Boulevard.

Morejón's two kids, ages six and nine, stayed behind with a nanny. By nightfall, the couple hadn't returned. The alarmed caretaker called police.

Authorities began investigating and soon contacted the children's mother, Alely Acosta, who lived in a one-bedroom apartment at 6525 W. 24th Ave. in Hialeah. Forty-eight hours later, she arrived in Cancún, picked up the kids, and returned to South Florida.

The cops suspected the pair had been kidnapped. Eleven days after Morejón disappeared, following an anonymous tip, about a dozen Mexican police officers walked down a narrow dirt road surrounded by thick brush near the Cancún-Mérida highway. It was about two kilometers from the Solymar's front steps.

Soon they came upon an abandoned stone building near a site where law enforcers once incinerated confiscated drugs.

An officer stopped near the front door. Before him was a handcuffed, shirtless corpse in dirty white Bermuda shorts lying face down. The dead man's left index finger had been mutilated, and the body was covered in welts. When police turned him over, they found his eyes and mouth shut with duct tape. His face had been obliterated by bullets.

An autopsy revealed Morejón had been shot 12 times, six in the head and six in the torso, with a 9mm pistol.

Three days later, at 3:30 p.m., police received a second anonymous tip. Some 600 meters from the Morejón crime scene, in a natural sinkhole 10 meters deep, they found Sáenz's decomposing body. Her murder drew particular attention. After all, she was the child of prominent Yucatán hoteliers.

Also buried in the sinkhole were two young Mexicans, Jesús Aguilar and Edwin Park.

The victims were covered in lime, and, like Morejón, had been blindfolded, gagged with duct tape, and handcuffed. Forensic analysts determined they had been shot six to eight times with 9mm bullets similar to the ones that had killed Morejón.

Police believe Morejón and the Mexican men were human traffickers and that their brutal murders were part of the latest dustup in a turf war between groups of Cuban-Americans. The girlfriend was collateral damage in the bloody conflict that claimed the lives of seven people in August, including Morejón's alleged boss, Manuel Duarte Díaz.

The carnage is just one indication of the booming market in smuggling Cubans through Mexico by land to Texas and Miami or elsewhere. Some 9,296 Cubans crossed the border into the Lone Star State between October 1, 2006, and July 22, 2007, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That's more than double the 4,589 who crossed or were picked up by the Coast Guard in the Florida Straits during the same period.

Stakes are high. Traffickers charge at least $10,000 per person to ferry Cubans off the island to the Yucatán.

Smugglers provide undocumented Cubans with shelter in Cancún and the neighboring city of Mérida, a place Mexican prosecutor Bello Melchor Rodríguez calls "the financial base of operations for these bands of Cuban-American mafia."

Rodríguez explains that smugglers in speed boats sometimes haul 25 to 30 passengers from Cuba to Mexico via the treacherous 135-mile-long Yucatán Channel. During a typical run, a speed boat transfers the human cargo onto a chartered yacht, which then docks at Cancún, Cozumel, or Isla Mujeres. The smuggled Cubans are given new clothes, usually beach apparel, to blend in with the tourists. "They are all over Quintana Roo and Yucatán," Rodríguez says.

Deadly violence is not the only obstacle these Cubans face. Those intercepted at sea by the Mexican navy face the possibility of immediate deportation. Those who make it to land and seek political asylum are jailed for 90 days or more while awaiting a hearing. Detentions of undocumented Cubans in Mexico skyrocketed from 254 in 2002 to 2,205 in 2006, according to the National Immigration Institute of Mexico. About a third of those were sent back to the island, where they likely face serious prison time for escaping Cuba.

And even if they make it to Texas, Cubans risk appearing before an unsympathetic federal judge who has denied political asylum to every Cuban who has gone through his courtroom, tacking on at least another 90 days of incarceration in exchange for American liberty.

In effect, the Mexico route is an end-around on the U.S. "wet foot/dry foot" policy in which Cubans caught at sea are taxied back to the island, but those who make it to U.S. soil can stay. The phenomenon has given rise to a new term: dusty foot.

"I am not happy with the [U.S.] policy," says Jorge Ferragut, a Cuban who settled in Houston in 1980 and later started Casa Cuba, an organization aimed at helping Cubans who arrive in Texas. "The people that try to leave, they are putting their lives in danger."

Sometime after 3:30 p.m. this past December 6, Alexander Pedraza Martínez made his way to an isolated corner in the dusty courtyard of a Mexican immigration detention center where he is sequestered. The thin 44-year-old Cuban physician with gray and white stubble on his face looked around to make sure none of the guards was watching. Then he pulled out a cell phone from the pocket of his green Bermuda shorts and dialed his sister-in-law's number in west Miami.

Within seconds, the cordless phone in Ivette Chung's kitchen blared. A thin 36-year-old dressed in aqua hospital scrubs, Chung got up from the dining room table, where she had been sipping Cuban coffee with Martínez's elderly aunt, Olga González, and answered the call.

"Hello?" Chung said anxiously. "It's him! It's Alexander!"

Martínez has been stuck in Tapachula, on the Guatemalan border, since June, wondering if he will ever make it to Miami. His predicament offers a glimpse into Mexico's haphazard immigration policy, which allows Cubans who enter by land to stay after paying a fine of 1,000 pesos ($92.07), but deports those intercepted at sea if the Communist government wants them back. The only way to avoid deportation is to claim political asylum and spend 90 days in detention until a Mexican immigration judge hears the case. Yet Martínez has been waiting more than 180 days for his hearing.

Back on the island, Martínez was a respected physician. He was vocal about his desire to leave, so vocal that he feared arrest. Twice in the past two years, he had been detained and interrogated by Cuban police. "I had no other way out, because Cuba always rejected my applications to go on medical missions," he says. "I had to be very careful in everything I did, so I had to find a way out."

More than six months ago, Martínez and 29 other Cubans, including a woman with a 15-month-old daughter, climbed aboard two rickety, tin-hulled boats powered by old car engines at a beach between Havana and Pinar del Río. Fifty-five-year-old Aquiles Cosme tagged along because he had nothing left in Cuba. A tall, heavyset fellow with probing brown eyes and thick gray hair, he had dreamed of reuniting with his only daughter, Yamila, and his wife, Maritza Gómez, who live in Westchester. Cosme had lived through three surgeries on his colon, but had no one to help him in Cuba.

So for four days, the novice seafarers navigated the Gulf of Mexico. "Our intention was to head north," Martínez says during a half-hour telephone conversation with his relatives and a reporter. "We wanted to get to Miami."

But then one of the boats' motors conked out about 50 nautical miles from the Yucatán coastline. "We were not going to leave anyone behind," Martínez adds.

As they drifted in the gulf, the Cubans observed another boat nearby. "We waved at them and got their attention," Martínez says. The unknown vessel was manned by a couple of Mexicans, who tied a rope to the Cubans' disabled boat and began towing them to shore.

Some 37 miles off the Mexican coast, and still in international waters, a Mexican naval ship picked them up. Soon they were delivered to Cancún International Airport, where they were placed in a detention cell, Martínez says. One day later, the doctor was granted permission to contact his sister-in-law in west Miami. "I wanted to let her know I was in Mexico but that I wanted to go to the United States," he says.

They were detained in Cancún for approximately one week and then transferred to the detention facility in Tapachula. Martínez describes the place: "There is a big cement wall with barbed wire that surrounds the complex," he says. "Guards with rifles man watchtowers along the perimeter. There are bars on the doors to our sleeping quarters. There is a closed security camera system in the hallways. This is a jail, no doubt."

He sleeps in a cell with 10 other people under a 500-watt light bulb that is never turned off. "It stays on all night long," he says. "It's psychological torture." His diet consists of white rice, red beans, shredded chicken meat, and bread.

He stays in contact with his Miami relatives via cell phones that other detainees have smuggled into the facility.

"Our [immigration] situation is unknown," Martínez laments. "We have tried everything to get out of this place, but no one will do anything."

Eighteen members of his group, including the 15-month-old baby and her mother, have been returned to Cuba. Six others were released, including four family members of an elderly man who died of natural causes shortly after the group arrived in Cancún. "I guess to shut them up they let them go," Martínez complains. "I know they made it to Miami."

From his group, only six remain. But he says there are about 67 Cubans being held in the facility. The detainees have received assistance from the Mexican chapter of Médicos sin Fronteras, a humanitarian aid group. Representatives of the group have met with seven high-ranking officials at the National Immigration Institute of Mexico, including Secretary Pablo Enríquez Rodríguez.

"Regrettably no one wants to respond," Martínez says.

The situation is even grimmer for Martínez's boat mate, Aquiles Cosme, who has lost more than 20 pounds since arriving in Tapachula. Back in Westchester, in the entertainment room of her four-bedroom residence, Aquiles's daughter Yamila dabs away tears. The pretty, fair-skinned 32-year-old with doll-like brown eyes is concerned her father won't make it out alive. "He has to eat a very basic diet so he doesn't bleed," she says. "He is under a lot of stress and tension."

During Cosme's incarceration in Mexico, Yamila has been frantically sending documentation of her father's illness to immigration officials. In addition, her father has undergone a colonoscopy in Mexico to prove he is sick. "The tests showed that he needs a complete reconstructive surgery of his colon," she says. "Yet two weeks have gone by and the immigration officials won't answer his questions about allowing his release. Are they waiting for him to die? It's just so frustrating."

Yamila believes Mexican authorities should release her father for humanitarian reasons. "They released the family members of the man who died in their custody," she argues. "They should do the same for my father." In recent weeks, Yamila, Martínez's family members, and the relatives of at least a dozen Cubans detained in Mexico have been appearing on Spanish-language radio and television programs to drum up public awareness and put pressure on the Mexican government to release the Cubans. U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla) wrote a letter to the Mexican ambassador in the United States to intervene on their behalf. But so far it doesn't seem to be working. "I need my father alive," says Yamila. "He is not going to make it over there."

In Cuba, Rey Rodríguez was a professional photographer in a provincial town. He considered entering the priesthood, but there was little support for seminarians on the island, so in 2003 he secured a visa to Mexico to further his studies. Then Rodríguez fell in love with a Mexican girl during a religious retreat and got her pregnant. He abandoned the seminary, and the couple decided to marry and start a family in Morelia, a colonial city in central Mexico.

In 2004, Rodríguez applied for Mexican residency. He received an unexpected answer. Authorities told him to leave the country in 72 hours or risk deportation. Instead of departing, Rodríguez purchased false documents that identified him as a Mexican citizen. He destroyed all belongings that mentioned his Cuban nationality.

He also worked to change his accent, mannerisms, and word choice to appear more Mexican. It wasn't easy.

His scheme worked for a while. Rodríguez married his girlfriend, their child was born, and he found part-time work at a Ford dealership. With his brown skin and straight black hair, Rodríguez passed three years without trouble.

Finally, last spring, Mexican immigration officials caught and detained him. They released him after issuing him a document stating his real name and nationality. (According to the National Immigration Institute of Mexico, authorities have detained 876 Cubans this year and deported 271.) "It was just a plain piece of paper with a stamp, but it was the only identification I had left," Rodríguez says. "The paper said that I had 30 days of parole in Mexico before I would be ordered out of the country."

Rodríguez decided to bolt for the Texas border. He had heard he could pass legally into the United States there. After a day on a bus from Morelia to Matamoros, he arrived at the border crossing. Fearing he would be caught and sent back to Cuba, he trembled as he approached the gate to the international bridge.

At the turnstile, he fumbled for change in his pockets. He had only a 10-peso piece, the wrong coin. He tried to stuff the peso into the slot, but it wouldn't fit. A Mexican guard approached, armed with an automatic rifle.

"Mexico is so corrupt," Rodríguez says. "You're constantly having to pay bribes to get anything done. I thought I would have to pay another bribe to get across."

But the guard offered the correct change. Rodríguez strolled across the bridge and came to a line of people curling out of the U.S. customs office. He began talking to others, telling his story.

The Mexicans were surprised a Cuban would wait in such a long line. They told him he could simply walk up to a window inside the office, declare his nationality, and claim political asylum. Rodríguez did, and hours later he walked into Texas.

Rodríguez recently moved to Houston, where he resides in a one-bedroom apartment with another Cuban, Silvino, whom he met while living near the border. He's optimistic about job prospects but misses his wife and two children, who are still living in Mexico. He has thought about trying to persuade his family to sneak across the border, but says he's going to wait until he has the money to bring them here legally.

Enveloped by darkness, a tractor rumbled down the hills of Cuba's western coast. It pulled a cart loaded with a makeshift boat constructed from aluminum tubing and an old car motor.

Fourteen Cubans crammed onto the boat, destined for a twisting river that leads to the Yucatán Channel. To Harry Reinier, who had been waiting with the others in a safe house for weeks, the vessel felt like a kitchen sink.

Reinier didn't know what to expect at sea. He had never set foot on a boat before this moment. Food and water were scarce. He brought a backpack full of canned food and two jugs of water for each member of the group. He knew only that their goal was the east coast of Mexico — a trip he believed would take four days. Reinier had little money, few resources, and no guarantee the boat would ever reach land.

But the risk would be worth it. Before he left Cuba this spring, Reinier worked in a bakery, kneading dough for 10 hours a day and $12 a week. His mother had fled Cuba years earlier for Peru. When a friend told Reinier about a planned escape to Mexico, he emptied his savings account and paid $500 to reserve a seat on the boat. It was blind faith; he had never met the men in charge of the trip. "Everyone wants to leave Cuba," Reinier says. "When there is money, and there is a chance, that's when they leave."

The boat sputtered east for two days before the motor died. For more than a week, it drifted on the open sea. Food and water ran out. There were only raw fish and rainwater.

Then they finally reached shore. After suffering dehydration, sunburn, and exhaustion; after battling sleep-deprived, crazed boat mates; after spending five months in a Mexican prison; and after enduring marathon bus rides to Mexico City and Matamoros, Reinier crossed the Texas border.

Following his release from prison, Reinier walked to a small park across the street from the customs office in Brownsville, Texas. Large trees shaded concrete benches, and recently arrived immigrants rested in the park or waited for companions. Reinier began asking strangers for advice.

He eventually found his way to a Catholic church in the heart of Brownsville. The church contacted Sister Margaret Merkens, an ex-Catholic schoolteacher from Missouri who runs a small shelter for refugees about 30 miles north of the border. After a few weeks at the shelter, Reinier felt stuck. Five months ago, when he stepped aboard the homemade boat and set out for Mexico, he knew it would be the last time he would see Cuba. His sister is still there, along with his wife and child. He misses the place.

Reinier rarely leaves the shelter grounds, which are surrounded by acres of dirt and sugar cane fields, miles from any businesses that might provide work. He sometimes hitches a ride into town to go to the bank and cash the $500 in government assistance checks he receives monthly.

Most days Reinier either studies English or cooks dinner for other refugees. He has applied for several jobs in surrounding towns but thinks whites and Mexican-Americans are suspicious of a black man with a funny Spanish accent.

He's waiting for an immigration hearing to get his green card. "You could put a paper in front of me that says, 'This black guy will be your slave,' and I would sign it," he says, "because I have no idea what I'm signing."

But Reinier has some hope. He figures he can venture out on his own as soon as he learns enough English. He doesn't know much about the Texas away from the border and wants to leave the state so he can find work. He has heard of a place called Kentucky; he dreams of settling down there.

"I have no idea what it's like there," he says, "but it sounds calm and peaceful, with plenty of jobs for Cubans. I think that it's a place where I could raise a family."

Stories like these have some anti-immigration groups fuming. The Federation for American Immigration Reform supports ending all preferential treatment of Cubans, who were first given a path to residency in the United States in 1966, when the government passed the Cuban Adjustment Act. Ira Mehlman, a representative for the federation, says the policy encourages all kinds of illegal immigrants — including potential terrorists — to seek asylum on American soil.

"It's a vestige of a Cold War-era policy that didn't make sense even during the Cold War. Castro has always been happy to export his political dissidents here to yell and scream," Mehlman says. "Cubans should be treated exactly like everyone else — no better and no worse."

One immigration judge at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, Howard E. Achtsam, regularly denies asylum to Cubans — apparently on principle. This forces them to spend more time in detention, though they're eventually freed. "If you're unfortunate enough to get Judge Achtsam, that means you're probably going to get denied," says attorney Jodie Goodwin. "I think he has got to be the only immigration judge in the country that routinely denies asylum for Cubans." (The U.S. Justice Department acknowledges that every Cuban who has passed through Port Isabel in the past two years has been denied asylum.)

Even some prominent Cuban-Americans question the legitimacy of asylum claims by "dusty foot" Cubans. Grisel Ybarra, an immigration attorney in Miami who fled Cuba in 1962, thinks the Cuban Adjustment Act shouldn't apply in Texas. She thinks most Cubans are seeking a better-paying job, not political freedom.

"These Cubans come here, tell some bullshit story at the border, and they get their green card," Ybarra says. "I came here seeking freedom, not hot dogs. My generation, we are refugees; they are immigrants. If you came to Miami and asked Cubans who came here before Mariel [in 1980], 99 percent of them would agree with me...."

Compounding the problem, Ybarra adds, are Cuban-Americans who support illegal human trafficking by paying tens of thousands of dollars to get their relatives off the island. "Cubans are the richest Hispanic group in the U.S.," she says. "We live in million-dollar homes in Coral Gables. We have the money to pay for boats to get people out of Cuba."

In the Florida Straits, the Coast Guard has become more aggressive toward suspected smugglers, according to Chief Petty Ofcr. Dana Warr of the U.S. Coast Guard. Officers are instructed to shoot at boats that do not respond to warning shots. Gunfire has a 100 percent success rate, Warr says, so it's no surprise that smugglers have changed direction. "We know it's happening, that there is a lot of maritime smuggling between Cuba and Mexico," he says. "We have a vested interest because, indirectly, that is illegal smuggling into the U.S."

If smuggling continues to affect the number of Cubans crossing the Texas border, Warr says, Coast Guard ships could patrol as far south as the Yucatán Channel. "The Caribbean Sea is two million square miles, and we try to patrol every bit of it," he says. "We realize we can't catch them all."

Quintana Roo Attorney General Bello Melchor Rodríguez acknowledges Mexican law enforcement is having a difficult time battling smugglers. Moreover, Rodríguez says, some rings employ assassins known as Los Zetas, or The Zs, former Mexican National Police officers and ex-special armed forces soldiers turned freelance mercenaries. Los Zetas are responsible for the turf war-related murder of reputed human trafficker Francisco Javier Fernández Ramírez this past July and the July 27 shooting of suspected Cuban smuggler Alberto Maya Mendoza, who spent two weeks in a coma in a Mérida hospital.

Jenaro Villamil, a reporter for Yucatán newspaper Periódico AM, says the rings act with impunity. "We are talking about a multimillion-dollar industry involving Mexican cartels, local businessmen, corrupt immigration authorities, and the Cuban-American mafia," Villamil says. "The battle for control is taking place in Quintana Roo, specifically in Cancún."

The roots of Miami resident Luis Lázaro Lara Morejón's bloody execution-style killing in Cancún date back at least five years. He and his then-wife, Alely Acosta, arrived in Miami from Cuba in 2002, when they took up residence in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condominium in west Hialeah, about a three-minute drive from Palmetto General Hospital. Over the next four years, the couple and their two children moved to two different condos within five miles of each other.

Little is known about Morejón's time in Miami-Dade County. Six of his neighbors New Times questioned couldn't remember him or Acosta, whom Morejón apparently split with sometime in 2005 — about a year before he fled to Mexico. New Times was not able to locate Acosta at her last known address, a one-bedroom apartment 10 blocks from the condo at 65th Street and 24th Avenue in west Hialeah. The place was empty during a recent visit, perhaps indicating she and the young children fled after the murder.

Morejón's name appears in the Miami-Dade County Clerk's online database, but no information is available about any charges, indicating he probably has a sealed criminal record. The clerk's website also reveals Morejón's Florida driver's license was suspended March 27, 2006, when he failed to pay a $162 fine for a traffic violation.

The reason is clear. By then, Morejón was in Cancún. He had joined more than 200 Cuban-Americans, many of whom are originally from Miami, in the smuggling business, asserts Quintana Roo prosecutor Melchor Rodríguez.

Shortly after his arrival, Morejón hooked up with Manuel Duarte Díaz, nicknamed "El Maní" ("The Peanut"), the alleged top man of a human trafficking ring operating in Mérida and Cancún, Rodríguez says. Morejón mediated between El Maní and Cuban-Americans in the United States seeking to get their relatives out of Cuba. The exiles would send Morejón the money and he would then pick up their relatives and take them to a safe house in Mérida. There he would provide them with food and new clothes so they wouldn't arouse the attention of law enforcement in the Yucatán province where Mérida is located.

Rodríguez won't say exactly how much Morejón was earning, but contends it was more than $100,000 per year.

According to police officials in Quintana Roo, El Maní and Morejón knew a local named David (authorities declined to provide his full name), who worked for the regional office of the National Immigration Institute of Mexico. The Cubans paid David to help them secure legal immigration status for the undocumented Cubans. The alleged smugglers were also doing business with Francisco Ramírez, the Cuban executed at the hands of Los Zetas. Ramírez owned a fishing charter business with Edwin Park, one of the two Mexicans executed alongside Morejón's girlfriend María Sáenz.

Rodríguez believes a rival Cuban-American ring paid Los Zetas to kill Morejón, his girlfriend, and his business associates. "Where we found the bodies and how they were killed points to Los Zetas," Rodríguez says.

Nearly six months after the murders, Mexican detectives have detained and questioned 20 individuals suspected of human trafficking. But the authorities still don't have any solid leads.

During a press conference this past December 10, Mexico's attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, said the killings and the trafficking are likely to continue as long as Cubans keep receiving automatic asylum in the States. "It has been legally proved," Medina Mora told reporters, "that people of Cuban origin but who are citizens of the United States are involved, financing these people-smuggling operations, obviously with the complicity of Mexicans."