Published: 05/16/90
Section: LIVING TODAY
Page: 1D
I went to the Habana Libre Hotel and waited in line for my turn to reserve a place at Vinales for my honeymoon. Ten days. Ten days of bothering and pushing and waiting in line. Push push push. Just to take a turn.
You've got to be inside of all this to understand. You work, you work, you work, you make sacrifices so you don't turn into some kind of delinquent, so you don't turn into a low-life. And still, it's impossible to make a living.
On April 14 at 10 p.m., Luis Armando Cantillo Suarez, tired of fighting
the small battles he feared would swallow his existence, took on the battle of
his life. The 22-year-old carpenter boarded a raft of inner tubes and plywood
he had secretly pieced together over the previous week and shoved away
from Cuba's north coast. His travel companion was Raul Navarro Encalada, also
22, a baker.
Seven days later, sometime in the early morning of April 21, Navarro rolled off the raft and disappeared into the Florida Straits, dehydrated, delirious and dreaming of land. Several hours after that, Cantillo washed up on the ocean side of Elliott Key, stumbled up the beach and knocked on the door of a house, asking for water.
Of the hundreds of Cubans who have taken their chances crossing the Florida Straits in the past year, the two were typical: young, male, blue-collar workers. Many have arrived faster than Cantillo, aboard motor boats or rafts spotted by passing vessels within two or three days of leaving Cuba. Others never arrived at all, apprehended by the Cuban government or forever lost at sea.
This is the story, in Cantillo's words, of why and how they left Cuba.
*
You go around thinking, I'm going to leave the country. I'm going. I'm
leaving. But things get complicated. You have to find a raft. You have to find
someone else who wants to go, someone discreet. The Committees for the Defense
of the Revolution are watching you. Everybody's watching you. The guards are
watching you. I was afraid I'd fail, and then I'd be forced to try again
because I'd have no future in the country.
*
The two men were friends from Cojimar, a small fishing town east of Havana. In the 1940s, Ernest Hemingway made the place famous. He kept his yacht, the Pilar, in Cojimar and found his inspiration there for The Old Man and the Sea.
Cantillo taught construction and carpentry at a training center in Cojimar. Though married to another woman, he lived with his longtime girlfriend, Anabelkis, 21, their 7-month-old son Yessel, and Anabelkis' mother.
Cantillo and Navarro both had relatives in the United States. Cantillo's father left Cuba in 1979 and now lives and works in Belle Glade, though he lost touch with his son in 1986. Navarro's mother, who arrived during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, lives in Miami.
The two companions had frequently discussed their desire to leave Cuba. Cantillo said a third companion, a friend of Navarro's, had asked to join them at the last minute but bailed out after finding a larger vessel.
*
We had spoken about the possibility of coming here. But we had never made a definite decision. We thought about it during my brother's wedding. That was Saturday, the seventh of April. The next day we were at the beach, talking about the possibility . . . We decided that the week would not pass without the two of us leaving.
*
Cantillo saw the clandestine escape as his only chance to leave Cuba. Without immediate relatives who are U.S. citizens, he had no hope of moving to the United States as a regular immigrant. Nor did he have relatives who might underwrite his stay in a third country while he tried to find a way to the United States. Cantillo hoped he could get to the States, establish himself, then help Anabelkis and Yessel to follow him -- by a less dangerous route.
But Navarro had an alternative. His father, a former political prisoner, had been granted asylum in Spain. Friends and relatives outside Cuba were gathering the necessary $6,000 so the whole family could leave. But Navarro did not want to wait. "It seems he thought the money wouldn't be gathered," said Migdalia Travieso, Navarro's aunt, who lives in Miami. "We are beating our brains trying to figure out what motivated him to do this."
They told few that they were leaving: Though the punishment for those caught leaving the island illegally has been reduced in recent years, Cantillo said those apprehended by the Cuban Border Patrol still face sentences of one to three years. Rafters say that those left behind also fear reprisals for friends and relatives who take off without permission.
For Cantillo and Navarro, the preparations took less than a week.
*
We bought two inner tubes from a bus terminal, 10 pesos apiece. I went to a workshop where I had some friends, and I made the four oars. We found a piece of plywood and attached it to the bottom of the tubes.
*
The two secretly carried the raft in sections to an isolated stretch of beach outside Cojimar. Their first attempt was Thursday, April 12. It failed. Their third accomplice, who was to bring some of the provisions, did not show up at the appointed site: He had spotted the Cuban Border Patrol, he later told them.
The second try -- the one that got them on their way -- came two days later. At 5 p.m., carrying fishing nets and reels, the two boarded the No. 26 bus, heading toward Alamar, just east of Cojimar. They got off at the La Siberia bus stop and walked to the beach.
*
We began to throw the nets into the water and began to pretend we were fishing. About 50 meters away, there were other people who were also fishing, despite all the waves. We realized that perhaps they were there for the same reason we were. There were four of them. Two would go hide behind a hollow, then three would be gone and one would remain. Then no one remained. *
As darkness fell, a relative arrived with two bags of provisions. There were six boiled chickens, two bottles of water, two bottles of wine, three cans of orange soda, four cans of evaporated milk and two cans of meat. They had a pair of binoculars, a compass, a digital clock, a knife and a can of oil that Cantillo had heard would scare away sharks.
They dressed heavily to protect against exposure. Cantillo wore gym shoes, slacks, a blue pullover, a white sweatshirt and a yellow sweatshirt. Navarro wore purple pants, white tennis shoes, a black shirt, a purple sweatshirt, and a white sweatshirt.
*
We left rowing and rowing and rowing. There was no moon, but we could see a few stars. The water was fairly calm, but there were waves along the coast . . . We were quiet, quiet, quiet, without talking, without saying a thing. At about 12:30 p.m., when we were pretty far from shore, the Border Patrol's searchlight flashed over us. We rowed, rowed, rowed. We kept rowing, rowing until we lost Cuba's lights.
*
In the pocket of his yellow sweatshirt, Cantillo carried a palm leaf, a memento of Palm Sunday. Around his neck, Navarro, nicknamed Lalo or Lalito, wore a medallion of the Virgin of Charity, Cuba's patron saint. They kept rowing until 6 a.m., then fell asleep.
*
When we woke up, we realized that there was not a soul around us, not a faraway boat, not anything at all. It was all ocean. I said, "Lalo, look at that ocean." We felt small, small, small.
*
On the 15th, at about 6 p.m., sharks found them:
There were eight or nine sharks, circling us. Large, small, medium ones. They went around the raft, around and around, slowly. They had mouths like sharks, teeth and all. They were blue. We had a gallon of burned oil and threw it at them, but they didn't go away. So I said to Lalo, "Lalo, let happen whatever they want to happen. Let's go to sleep. And if the sharks want to flip us over, we'll see what we can do." We slept that night, completely. The next morning, the sharks were gone.
*
On the 16th, they kept rowing, most of the day and into the night. The Gulf Stream carried them north. Across the water, they spotted a light.
*
Soon we came upon a ship. It was a large merchant ship. Two hundred meters from us, it stopped.
I said, "Lalito, look at that ship, God sent it to save us." It came closer and closer, and then stopped. I said to Lalo, "Let's row toward it and make signals." He said, "Are you crazy, that boat has Cuban characteristics, it's red with white and some black."
We were hopeful of arriving soon, because we had seen the
lights. I said, "OK, we'll row away from it." We began to row, row, row until
we couldn't see the ship.
*
On the 16th, the clock filled with water and they threw it out. On the 17th, the knife fell in the water, as did their air pump for keeping the inner tubes filled. The compass also filled with water and had to be thrown away.
*
On the 18th, we spent the day rowing. We were out of water, and the bad weather began. The raft flipped
over three times. My hands were blistered, and it hurt too much to keep on rowing. On the night of the 19th, we saw an American boat 50 meters away. There were tall waves, taking us up and bringing us down. Up and down. Up and down. We spent the whole day without water, drinking salt water.
We spent the 20th bad bad bad. We didn't have any water, we were delirious. Lalo would say, don't worry, because soon his dad would be arriving in a small plane to pick us up. I saw land. I closed my eyes and saw my house in Cojimar. I saw water, I wanted to drink and wanted a glass full of ice.
*
Of the two, Lalo was suffering more, Cantillo said. He vomited constantly and fantasized that they were being saved, that a boat passed by and left two tanks of water. The night of the 20th, Lalo jumped into the water.
*
Even when he was in the water, he was saying that he was on the ground. He said, "Come down, and we'll go to my house." I said, "Come down where, Lalito? You're in the water."
I grabbed him, and told him to tie himself to the raft and not throw himself into the ocean, because he was going to drown, that he should try to sleep and by morning someone would find us.
*
At around 3 a.m., Cantillo fell asleep. When he woke up again, Navarro was gone.
*
"Lalito," I shouted. I can't see him and I start to shout, "Lalo, Lalo, Lalo." I asked what had I done to face such a death. Nobody would see me die. I wouldn't talk to my son. I'm going to disappear without anyone seeing me. But I never thought of throwing myself into the sea. He didn't either.
*
At dawn, he saw land. The waves and current carried him toward Elliott Key in Biscayne National Park, near Homestead. Most Cuban rafters don't reach land on their own. Those who survive the journey are usually spotted by passing vessels, and carried to shore, usually by the U.S. Coast Guard.
*
I saw a house. On the gate I saw the head of a dog and some words. I supposed that entry was forbidden, but I said to myself, "Let the dogs eat me, but I need water." I was thirsty.
*
The woman, who asked park rangers to protect her anonymity, told them she woke up with the sound of her dogs barking and thought a raccoon had crawled onto the porch. She looked down and saw a man lying on her lawn.
*
She began to talk to me in English, and I didn't understand any English. And I said, "Lo que yo quiero es agua," and she didn't understand me. I made a motion. She said, "Water?" and I answered, "Si, agua." I took the water and felt as though I had just received one million pesos.
*
The U.S. Coast Guard took Cantillo to its Islamorada Station, and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service brought him to the Krome Avenue Detention Center in West Dade. Cantillo's father, an agriculture worker in Belle Glade, spotted his son that Friday in a WLTV-Channel 23 television news report and tracked him down.
Cantillo, released the next day from Krome, has moved to Belle Glade, where he lives with his father in Mision Renacimiento, a house run by a fellow Cuban exile, an evangelical Christian. Last week, Cantillo started working at a corn packing house. He wants to learn English and find a better job.
© 1996 The Miami Herald.