POLITICS-CUBA/US: Tragedy in the Air Underscores Emigration Dilemma

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jan 18 2001 (IPS) - The death of two adolescents who left Cuba hidden in the landing gear of an airplane has moved a country where those who want to emigrate far outnumber those who have a real chance at doing so.

Alberto Esteban Vázquez, 17, and Maikel Fonseca, 16, were students at a military school when they decided to embark on their adventure.

The young men took advantage of torrential rains falling last Dec 24 to get past security at the Havana international airport and hide themselves in the landing gear of a British Airways aircraft just before it departed for London.

One of the bodies was found in a field near Britain’s Gatwick Airport and the other was located still inside the airplane’s undercarriage. With all investigations completed in London, the bodies of Vázquez and Fonseca were sent back to Cuba on Wednesday.

Yassel Díaz, a friend who knew of the boys’ plans and thought it was a joke, told Cuban President Fidel Castro, according to official reports, that an exile visiting the island had told Vázquez that this escape plan “never failed.”

Rumours are that many people have utilised that method to reach Miami, the US city that is home to the largest Cuban community outside the island. The teenagers apparently trusted promises of housing and work once they reached the United States.

But experts say it is impossible to survive a trip under such conditions. Escaping the island in an aircraft’s landing gear is “the equivalent to suicide,” affirmed Manuel Vega Palma, a specialist in aviation medicine with 16 years of experience.

Without knowing it, Vázquez and Fonseca chose the wrong airplane – it was not heading to the United States. They also made the mistake of hiding themselves in a space that lacks an oxygen supply and where temperatures plummet to 50 degrees below zero Celsius when the aircraft reaches an altitude of 10,000 metres.

The government-run media in Cuba blamed the United States for the tragedy, saying it encourages illegal emigration from the island because it receives any Cuban who reaches US territory – whether by land, sea, or air -, granting them special immigrant status.

The Cuban Adjustment Act, in effect since 1966, grants Cuban immigrants US residency one year and a day after reaching the country, regardless of whether their entry was legal or illegal.

The US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) revealed this month that 183,395 people were deported in the year 2000, including 149,183 Mexicans, 4,515 Hondurans, 4,443 Salvadorans and 4,073 Guatemalans.

Meanwhile, the US border patrol estimated that more than 1,800 Cuban citizens had reached the country illegally last year, representing a decline from 2,300 in 1999.

Except for the boy Elián González, who lived seven months in the United States against his father’s wishes after suffering a shipwreck off the coast of Florida, no Cuban immigrants faced deportation proceedings last year.

A roundtable discussion that included President Castro’s participation, broadcast by the state TV station, also placed responsibility on the families of Vázquez and Fonseca for giving them an unrealistic view of the United States.

“They are the siren’s song. A call for exodus, to die in order to be used against the Cuban revolution” of 1959, commented journalist Arleen Rodríguez.

Vázquez and Fonseca apparently were seduced by stories of “the good life and all that one can obtain in a consumer society” to make the decision to emigrate when they had no real political or economic reason to do so.

“It’s incredible that two boys had to die so young in such a stupid way,” said engineer Yodalia Guzmán, 38, who warned, however, that in the analysis of the case the internal causes that fuel the desire to emigrate are being ignored.

Guzmán agreed with the official opinion that the “open arms” policy of the United States constitutes an incentive to emigrate, but she stressed that it is essential “to analyse why people want to leave Cuba.”

A study by Antonio Aja, of the University of Havana’s Centre for International Migration Studies, indicates that Cuban emigration took on a predominantly economic nuance with the financial crisis that began on the island in 1990.

Economic motives are usually linked to political reasons, the desire to be reunited with family overseas or the lack of “confidence in the revolution’s social project for escaping the current situation,” Aja maintained in his report.

In the latter group, Aja included people who are unwilling to subordinate their individual life plans to the interests of society, prioritising their personal goals “above any other political or ideological consideration.”

Research involving people who illegally left or tried to leave the island shows that most are seeking a home, the means to develop personally and professionally and, to a lesser extent, to satisfy their desire for personal freedom.

Consuelo Martín, a researcher at the same academic centre, maintained that emigration has become one more survival strategy that the Cuban population has turned to in order to confront the crisis and its effects on daily life.

The Cuban economy suffered a 34.8-percent decline from 1990 to 1993. Though it began a recovery, the impact of the sharp drop in production could require a decade before the island achieves the living standards of 1989, say economists.

Under those circumstances, figures topped 105,000 emigrants from 1990 to 1994, according to academic studies. In 1994, when the so-called rafters’ crisis occurred, an estimated 50,000 people left the island illegally.

The massive exodus in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 1994 led Havana and Washington to sign two accords in order to regulate the bilateral migration flow.

The first agreement committed the United States to providing 20,000 entry visas annually for Cuban immigrants, and the second established the repatriation of any Cuban who is intercepted in an illegal attempt to reach US territory.

From 1995 to December 2000, 133,800 Cuban citizens emigrated to the United States legally, but the number of people interested in emigrating is much greater, given the applications filed for US visa lotteries held in 1994, 1996 and 1998.

According to official US sources, 130,000 applications were received for the first lottery, 438,00 for the second, and the third, held in June 1998, involved 541,100 applications.

In measuring Cuba’s emigration potential, analysts point out that many of the applicants rejected in the first lottery are likely to have tried again in the other two opportunities.

It is widely assumed that there are many more people who want to emigrate than those who are legally able to. Many, because they have a criminal record or little education, do not even bother to apply for a visa and choose an illegal route instead.

The homemade rafts used in the 1990s were replaced, to great extent, by speedboats that travel the 190 km of ocean that separate the two countries, with smugglers charging as much as 8,000 dollars per passenger and promising to evade the US Coast Guard.

The Miami Herald daily reported that there has been a notable increase in Cubans who enter the United States by land – crossing the Mexican or Canadian borders – or by air, arriving at US airports with falsified passports.

The US Coast Guard, meanwhile, acknowledges that fewer Cubans are being intercepted at sea, and the island’s media state that no repatriations to Cuba occurred last November or December.