RAFTING SEASON

ACCORDING to the Miami Herald, the balmy weather of the first week of June brought more than 70 Cubans in makeshift boats to the United States. There they were welcomed with open arms. Granma, Cuba's official newspaper, has a different tale to tell. Irresponsible American laws are luring Cubans to their deaths. This year alone, 160 "delinquents" have been picked up at sea and returned.

Both stories are right, to some degree. The United States likes to take in Cubans, and keeps 20,000 legal immigration slots for them each year. But they are meant to apply first. Since 1995, many of those who have not applied, but approached on rafts, have been returned.

Still Cubans go on leaving, in their thousands every year. Some go for political reasons, most for economic ones. Tired of the daily struggle to make ends meet, they heed what the authorities call "the siren-call of capitalism".

They find many different ways of following it. Hundreds of Cuban women, and some men, marry foreigners every year: some for love, some not. Many take to makeshift boats, like the 12 doctors and other professionals who asked for political asylum in Haiti on June 6th after they had been shipwrecked. Some defect while working abroad--Cuba, proud of its schools and health services, sends many doctors to Africa and Central America--to reappear in Madrid or Miami. The Cuban media do not report their going.

They also keep quiet about the defections of musicians and athletes. Last month one of Cuba's top salsa singers, Manolin, "the Salsa Doctor", emerged in Miami to say he was not going home. Earlier this month two blind teenage athletes, competing in pan-American games in South Carolina, sought political asylum. A leading sports journalist, Luis Acosta, did the same soon afterwards. His wife said he was being "suffocated" in Cuba.

Yet, as Cuba never tires of pointing out, the most famous recent emigrant eventually came back. June 28th will be the anniversary of the return of Elian Gonzales, now seven, who was plucked from the sea by American coastguards when a raft of emigrants capsized. As the Cuban authorities see it, his story proves the dangers of trying to reach Florida. It shows, too, the false promise of material happiness. Pampered with a bicycle, a puppy and all the electronics he could want, Elian still went happily home with his father. They are now national heroes, living contentedly in a small town in central Cuba. Why, the Cuban authorities will ask, would anyone want any better than that?

 

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