POPULATION-CUBA: The Last Raft-Person Leaves Guantanamo

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 1 1996 (IPS) - The last “raft-person” will leave the Guantanamo Naval Base Friday, when the remaining group of Cubans refused visas in the United States returns to its native soil.

Miguel Alfonso, representative of the Cuban foreign ministry, said Thursday that an undisclosed number of these “unacceptables” would flying home by plane.

The last of the 30,000 Cuban emigrants flew to Florida Wednesday, after months of virtual imprisonment in the US base following the exodus from the island in August 1994.

Children, adults and old people with no hope of ever getting a visa, began to be moved north in May, seven months after they first threw themselves into the sea.

During this time only 400 Cubans had opted for voluntary repatriation from the base after the US declared that only those who left would be eligible for visas.

Far greater numbers, close on 2,000 according to official Cuban estimates, risked their lives crossing the minefields around the base, or threw themselves into the sea to avoid the long wait for their official return papers.

Those who returned were let down heavily when Cuba and the United States finally agreed on May 2, 1995 that the Guantanamo Cubans would be offered a chance to enter their “promised land.”

In an attempt to stem illegal emigration, the US said it would accept the raft-people on its territory as long as they fulfilled the legal immigration conditions.

Any other Cubans picked up at sea trying to reach US soil or the Guantanamo base was to be repatriated.

It soon became clear that around 1,000 of the Guantanamo internees did not fulfill the immigration conditions, and up to 500 of those rejected are possibly still in the camp.

Specialist sources in Cuba stressed that the US decision had been produced by an internal decision to stem migration to their territory as much as possible, and the fear that the contained Cubans not qualified for visas might become a “human time bomb.”

“This could be the end of the raft-people in Guantanamo, but not of illegal emigration,” said a migration expert from the Alternative Politics Centre of the University of Havana.

Local observers said the illegal emigration could very well maintain the same level due to the tendency in some social sectors to accept the risk in order to gain an advantage when seeking a visa.

Under the May 1995 agreements, Cuba undertook to not punish the repatriates and the Section of US Interests in Havana decided to grant a special pass to each of them in order to maintain a close relationship.

Meanwhie, more than 200 Cubans have reached the Bahamas illegally in the past months with the aim of reaching the US whatever way they can.

Official sources in Cuba and the Bahamas signed an agreement in January to regulate the repatriation of all Cubans arriving illegally there after Aug. 4, 1994.

Local experts said the considerable reduction in illegal attempts to leave the country last year could be a trend about to turn tail, for the slow recovery of the Cuban economy has only slightly eased the economic pressure which caused the 1994 exodus.