Historic surge in Cuban emigration divides families; staying in touch via telephone and email

Historic surge in Cuban emigration divides families; staying in touch
via telephone and email
Associated Press Nov. 6, 2015 | 12:22 a.m. EST + More
By CHRISTINE ARMARIO, Associated Press

CAMAGUEY, Cuba (AP) — On the 14th of September last year, nine Cuban men
pushed their scrap-metal raft into the Florida Straits, started up its
tractor-trailer engine and disappeared north into the night.

A few days later the rumors started in Camaguey.

A broken raft had washed ashore without a passenger in sight, one
neighbor said. State security had arrested a group of male rafters, said
another.

Olea Lastre did the math: The engine could push her husband, son,
son-in-law and their companions through at least 10 miles of sea a day.
It would take, at most, 10 days to reach Florida.

"I wondered if my father was cold or thirsty," Lastre's 30-year-old
stepdaughter Yusneidi Cardenas recalled, her voice cracking. "I worried
if they could even swim."

On the 10th day, Lastre got down on her knees at 4 a.m. and prayed. If
she didn't hear that day that the men had survived, she knew she would
go insane.

That afternoon, the phone rang. The women screamed.

The men had made it.

A year later, they and the loved ones they left behind anxiously wonder
how long it will take to be reunited in the U.S. And the distance
separating them is great and, in some ways, getting greater.

___

The Cardenas men were part of a wave of migration unseen in at least a
decade.

Over the past two years, an estimated 100,000 Cubans have streamed into
the U.S., legally and illegally, a marked flight from an island of 11
million. The majority fly to another country in Latin America and then
make treacherous journeys by land to the U.S. border with Mexico.
Thousands of others obtain family reunification visas and travel
directly to the U.S. Those without money or relatives to help them flee
on rafts.

The surge began in 2013 after the communist government eliminated the
need for exit permits, and got bigger after Washington and Havana
announced plans in late 2014 to end 50 years of hostility and
re-establish relations between the Cold War foes. The reconciliation
stirred fears that the U.S. would end its policy of accepting most
Cubans who reach U.S. soil.

Nearly 4,500 Cubans reached U.S. soil in rafts, were caught at sea by
the U.S. Coast Guard or were otherwise thwarted while trying to flee
during the fiscal year that just ended, according to the Coast Guard. It
said it intercepted 2,900 migrants in the waters between the U.S. and
Cuba, the highest total since 1994.

The tide is not expected to ebb any time soon: More than 100 migrants
tried to reach the U.S. in rafts in the first four days of November,
compared with 207 in all of November last year.

The influx has swollen the ranks of Cubans who send home billions of
dollars a year in cash and consumer goods, vital support for a
struggling centrally planned economy. But it has also depopulated
neighborhoods, exacerbated the country's exodus of workers and
professionals and accelerated the division of families.

___

Residents of the Mar Azul condominium in Key Biscayne, Florida, pulled
out their cellphone cameras as Antonio Cardenas and the eight other men
steered their raft toward the shoreline, a plume of diesel trailing
behind them.

The men leaped from the vessel and sprinted toward the beach, knowing
that under U.S. policy since the 1990s, those stopped at sea are turned
back, while nearly all those who set foot on American soil can stay.

"Welcome to the land of liberty," a maintenance worker at the condo said
in Spanish.

___

The plan was clear, at least before the Cardenas men left: They would
land in the U.S., get legal residency after about a year, and then, like
so many other Cubans, bring over the rest of the family.

Within weeks the men were working odd jobs in Miami and sending small
amounts home. The first major purchase the Cardenas family made was
cellphones for the entire family.

For Yusneidi Cardenas, the phone was especially important. She was
raising a 2-year-old alone and didn't want Daikiel to forget his father,
Maikel.

Source: Historic surge in Cuban emigration divides families - US News -
http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/11/06/historic-surge-in-cuban-emigration-divides-families