By Dalia Acosta and Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Jul 6 2002 (IPS)

Authorities in Cuba have stepped up controls along the coast to prevent an exodus of would-be emigrants trying to make the dangerous 90-mile journey across the Florida strait to the United States, like the one seen in the summer of 1994.

The Cuban government reiterated Friday that it would apply “all the rigor of the law” to prevent illegal emigration, after reporting the arrest of one of the crew members of a speedboat intercepted by border guards off the coast of Villa Clara, some 300 kms from Havana.

Aboard the boat seized Friday were found “food and life jackets for several people, which indicates a people-trafficking operation,” stated the communique issued by the socialist government of Fidel Castro.

The other crew member escaped. Both were Cubans who had emigrated illegally to the United States, where they live, according to the official statement.

The communique added that 15 people were found Tuesday on the coast near the place where the vessel was intercepted, including two girls, ages three and five, “who were waiting for the speedboat in which they would illegally leave the country.

“The captured crew member will be immediately turned over to the courts, as will his companion in the adventure, as soon as he is captured.”

Cuba’s penal code provides for sentences of seven to 20 years for anyone convicted of trafficking people, although life sentences can be handed down if the people to be illegally transported include children under 14.

The incident was the first frustrated attempt at illegal emigration admitted by authorities since the government warned Wednesday that it would come down with all the weight of the law on people-smugglers.

In places like Cojímar, a fishing town, authorities have prohibited small privately-owned fishing boats from going to sea. Restrictions have also been placed on the speedboat transport service in Havana bay.

“You cannot be here,” a uniformed man repeated to everyone who tried to approach the reefs on the northern coast of the island, 25 kms from downtown Havana.

And since Wednesday, groups of three police officers have been staked out every 100 metres all along the Malecon, Havana’s seaside avenue, while border guard vessels were visible from the coast – a deployment typical of times of crisis in this Caribbean island nation.

In some parts of the capital, people have begun to talk more openly about building rafts, an activity that is prohibited by law.

“They were saying that Fidel was going to let anyone leave who wanted to, and that boats would come to get us from Florida,” said one resident of Old Havana. “I don’t know what to think anymore, but my brother is still getting his things together to leave.”

Since last week, rumours have been circulating that a fleet of boats would come from the United States and wait in international waters at the 12-mile limit to pick up anyone who made it that far.

A government communique released Wednesday to head off the rumours of an imminent lifting of controls against illegal emigration blamed the rumours on U.S.-based radio stations.

“A neighbour told me that the fleet might come any time before Jul 8…I think they’re just trying to get people riled up with that story,” Mercedes Manzano, who lives in a low-income part of the capital, told IPS.

She said uniformed police officers had come to her neighbourhood Thursday and searched every house. “My mother was alone…she said they were very respectful and asked permission to go out to the courtyard, because they were looking for someone,” she added.

But Manzano, who works as a cleaning woman for several different families, believes the police were looking for homemade rafts.

Good-quality rafts can fetch as much as 2,000 to 3,000 dollars. The traffickers’ speedboats are safer, but securing a spot on one can run as high as 8,000 dollars.

“As everyone knows, at this time of year, the climatic and maritime conditions are more favourable for this kind of irresponsible and criminal activity,” said authorities in the most recent report on the question of illegal emigration.

“No one can go here,” a police officer told IPS near the beach. “The order will be in place for at least three or four days, until things start getting back to normal,” he added, making a reference to what happened “right here, in the summer of ’94.”

In August 1994, the entire northern coast of Havana and other provinces in this Caribbean island nation was swarming with people who, after the Castro government lifted controls on illegal departures, were taking to sea on precarious rafts.

More than 30,000 people set out on the risky venture, with the hope of reaching international waters, where U.S. coast guard vessels might pick them up. No one knows how many died in the attempt.

The “rafters’ crisis” came to an end when Havana and Washington signed a migration accord aimed at regulating the flow of Cuban emigrants to the United States, and at making it safe.

As part of the agreement, signed in September 1994, Washington promised to issue 20,000 visas a year to Cubans wishing to emigrate to the United States.

That accord was complemented by another, reached in May 1995, which stipulated that any Cubans intercepted by U.S. authorities in the attempt to illegally enter the United States would be sent back to Cuba.

However, many still see escape by sea on a homemade raft or by paying a “people-smuggler” for a place on a speedboat as an alternative, since Washington has not struck down a law that gives any Cuban citizen who sets foot on U.S. soil the automatic right to asylum.

Since October 2001, 801 Cubans entered the United States illegally, according to U.S. sources, while the total between October 2000 and late September 2001 was 2,406.

Rumours of a new “rafters’ crisis” or a repeat of the 1980 “Mariel boatlift”, when 125,000 Cubans made the crossing, began to circulate last week after Castro said Cuba might abandon the migration accords.

Castro also threatened to close down the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, in reprisal for the activities of U.S. diplomats, who the Cuban government accuses of supporting dissident groups.

According to Castro, the U.S. government should not think that “officials of the Interests Section have any right to run around the country as they please on the pretext of monitoring the situation of illegal immigrants who are returned to Cuba, or to organise rings of conspirators, breaking the rules that govern the conduct of diplomats.”

The president also mentioned the “smuggling of goods in diplomatic pouches.”

However, Castro clarified that “this is not something we desire,” because it would be a “regrettable step backwards in the few areas where progress has been made in relations between the two countries.”

On Thursday, Castro himself attended a cultural act “in homage to the people of the United States, to their authentic culture, their roots, their traditions and humanistic values,” that was held to mark July 4th, U.S. Independence Day.

The U.S. government’s Radio Marti, a shortwave station broadcast by fervently anti-Castro Cuban exiles, reiterated that “the U.S. government supports legal and safe emigration. It does not support or encourage illegal emigration.”

Manuel Cuesta, with the Democratic Socialist Current, a dissident group, told IPS that “a collapse of the accords would bring to a halt all of the progress on that issue…I don’t think that anyone is interested in reaching that extreme.”

And according to Antonio Aja, assistant director of the University of Havana’s Research Centre on International Migration, “if the possibility of an orderly emigration flow exists, why opt for chaos?”

Excerpt: