{"id":253026,"date":"2022-05-18T16:26:28","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T20:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=253026"},"modified":"2022-05-18T16:26:28","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T20:26:28","slug":"migratory-things-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/in-plain-words\/migratory-things-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"Migratory things (IV)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn Pogolotti, a few doors from the home of <\/span>Juan Vald\u00e9s<\/span><\/a> and his wife Daisy, an entire family took on the task of building a raft inside their own house. Working day and night, fixing pine boards to tractor tubes, they made a boat that occupied their entire modest living room. They made oars out of baseball bats and mops, and a sail out of an old sheet, and came up with a creative solution when they found they weren\u2019t going to be able to get the raft out the door.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they took it to the coast, accompanied by young and old neighbors from the neighborhood, everyone gave them advice on the trip or helped them carry the saints from the altar, which the mother of the family had in the back room of the house. Particular attention was lavished on Yemay\u00e1, goddess of the sea, and Eleggu\u00e1, the one who opens paths. They launched the raft into the sea, and it felt the weight of the number of passengers and the provisions they had gathered for the dangerous journey. Instantly, it sank. After rescuing the saints, the family and those who supported them returned to Pogolotti and set about building a new boat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus began, in <\/span>The<\/span><\/i> History<\/span><\/i> of<\/span><\/i> Havana,<\/span><\/i><\/a> a book of ours from fifteen years ago, the account of the 1994 rafters crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Camarioca and Mariel, this event had not been a flash of lightning in a clear sky. Before, there were two rounds of migratory agreements with the United States that did not work, tens of thousands of Cubans who aspired to leave and could not find a way, another twist to the <\/span>blockade<\/span><\/a> called the Torricelli Act and various additional measures, numerous hijackings of boats, attacks on embassies, and even violent street protests and confrontations, not seen since 1960.<\/span><\/p>\n

But above all, the moment was marked by the free fall into the black hole called the <\/span>Special Period<\/span><\/i>, a crisis much worse than any experienced since then, however it is measured: decrease in GDP, family consumption, transportation, blackouts, inflation, shortages of food, lack of fuel, etc. That\u2019s how it was, although sometimes some who lived through it seem to have forgotten it, as if they were removing the bad memory of that dark 1993, storm of the century included.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the 1987 immigration agreement, the United States was going to grant 20,000 visas per year. However, in the seven years up to 1994, instead of 140,000, only 11,222 had been issued. The new President Clinton had declared, in 1993 when he became president, that the policy of \u201copen doors\u201d to Cubans was not going to \u201cplay along with the Cuban dictatorship to export the opposition\u201d and to use emigration as an \u201cescape valve\u201d in the midst of an economic crisis (the Special Period) that reflected \u201cthe failure of the Havana regime.\u201d Etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the undocumented route increasingly became the method chosen to leave Cuba and specially to enter the United States. In 1985-94, 82,500 Cubans tried or managed to reach U.S. territory. Of them, more than 60,000 did so between 1991-1994, counting the rafters in the summer of 1994.<\/span><\/p>\n

Migratory things (III)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n