US and Cuba Hold Migration Talks, While Young Cubans Flee the Island

US and Cuba Hold Migration Talks, While Young Cubans Flee the Island

Concerning the migration talks between Cuba and the United States which
are taking place today in Havana.

Carlitos finally made it to Atlanta, after trying five times to cross
the Straits of Florida. On two occasions he was intercepted by the U.S.
Coast Guard and returned to the Island. For months he saved the yellow
form they gave him to request - legally - a visa from the United States
Interest Section. However, he preferred a faster way to leave behind the
room he shared with his grandmother and the police harassment in his
neighborhood. He was also captured by the Cubans, on August 13 three
years ago, when the boat's propeller broke and his trip ended in a jail
in the village of Cojimar. There he was fined and a plainclothes office
began visiting him to demand he find a job.

After demonstrating his few talents as a sailor, this young man of 32
managed to go to Ecuador, one of the few countries that still does not
require a visa from Cubans. The South American nation was the trampoline
to enter the United States, where he is now trying to start a new life.
He left his GPS in the hands of some of his friends who had helped him
in his journeys, along with that form he had never filled out to ask for
a humanitarian visa. He did not leave for a pre-determined destiny,
rather he feared turning into a frustrated forty-year-old. Not even in
his most optimistic days could he foresee he would come to have his own
roof, or a salary that would save him from having to divert State
resources to survive.

Like so many other Cubans, Carlitos had no hope that the promises made
to him when he was a child would materialize. He did not want to grow
old sitting on the sidewalk in front of his house, taking the edge off
his failure with alcohol and some other pill. He planned every kind of
escape, but finally his uncle paid for the ticket to Quito with the
illusion that he would be able to get the rest of the family out. He
still dreams of boats that draw near in the middle of the night and take
him back to Cuba in handcuffs, smelling of salt and oil. He wakes up and
looks around to confirm that he is still in the little apartment he has
rented with a girlfriend. "Once a rafter, always a rafter," he muses,
while turning over his pillow and trying to dream on solid ground.

Yoani Sanchez: US and Cuba Hold Migration Talks, While Young Cubans Flee
the Island (21 February 2010)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/us-and-cuba-hold-migratio_b_469253.html