14ymedio, Havana, August 7, 2024 — Amaury Miguel Suárez Torres and his stepfather were the only survivors of the shipwreck of a raft in which, along with nine other Cubans, they sailed on July 14 from La Coloma beach, in Pinar del Río, heading to the United States. Rescued by the Cuban authorities, both have third-degree burns and are receiving medical attention in a hospital in the province, influencer Niover Licea reported on social networks. The raft, according to Licea, “began to take on water” in the middle of the journey, but the crew members, mostly residents of the Alonso Rojas People’s Council, decided to continue. In the early hours of the same day, the boat crashed into a reef and the rafters fell into the sea.
Suárez Torres was traveling with his 20-year-old girlfriend Ana Elis Gázquez Vargas, whose lifeless body was found on July 30 on the coast of the town of Cortés, belonging to the municipality of Sandino. The young woman, originally from Consolación del Sur, died from dehydration. According to the forensic report, when they found her body she had already been dead for a week and was identified by her relatives thanks to her tattoos.
Gázquez’s mother had asked her not to make the journey, but the young woman, tired of the situation on the Island, the economic crisis, the constant blackouts, decided to “set sail,” explains the influencer. Gázquez’s brother also shared on his social networks his regret for the young woman’s death, but did not offer more details.
Nothing is known about the other crew members except that several were carrying cash from the sale of their properties to pay for the travel expenses from Mexico, where they were probably going to land, to the United States. There are other records of irregular departures through La Coloma. In September 2022, two U.S. residents who had arrived at the beach in a speedboat to allegedly pick up several Cubans were arrested.
The Border Guards waited for the rafters, “camouflaged in the grass,” and confronted them, leaving several wounded, according to data from Cubans around the World.
The Ministry of the Interior also reported the discovery last July of a non-motorized boat on the beach of the Villa LindaMar Hotel, in Cayo Largo del Sur, and a Zodiac, also without an engine, in the Juan Claro canal, in the municipality of Martí, which belongs to the province of Matanzas.
According to a recent report by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP), 17,563 Cubans arrived in the United States in June across all borders, the smallest monthly number in the current fiscal year 2024 that began last October.
Last Wednesday, Cuba received 32 rafters deported by the U.S. Coast Guard and, with them, 899 have been deported to the Island from different countries in 56 returns so far in 2024, official media reported.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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