The Crossing Of The Desert

The Crossing Of The Desert / 14ymedio, Manuel Pereira
Posted on November 10, 2015

14ymedio, Manuel Pereira, Mexico City, 8 November 2015 — Since the
second half of the twentieth century we Cubans have been the Jews of the
Caribbean, and the Malecon is our Wailing Wall. Among other topics, the
immigration issue figures in the meeting between Raul Castro and Pena
Nieto in Merida, Yucatan. The two countries are united by historical
ties: the poet José María Heredia lived and died here in Mexico, José
Martí married here, passing through here were the politicians Mella,
Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara. In 1951 Perez Prado launched "Ruidoso
Rico Mambo" here, then came Benny More, Celia Cruz, "La Sonora
Matancera," the "Mulatas de Fuego" and, in the sixties, "The Tremendous
Corte" triumphed on radio and television with Trespatines, Rudesindo and
the Galician Rudesindo. All these humorous, musical and voluptuous
cyclones are forever linked with Cuba.

But the Cuban exodus is a tragedy of biblical proportions. If the desert
crossing of the Israelites lasted for 40 years, that of the Cuban people
has lasted half a century, counting from the first mass exodus from the
port of Camarioca (1965), followed by the port of Mariel stampede
(1980), which was repeated during the "rafters crisis" (1994).

In 1995, when the US Coast Guard began to return Cuban rafters
intercepted in the Straits of Florida, the island's escaping slaves
sought other routes toward the south. They started out from Camagüey,
for Santa Cruz del Sur, toward the Cayman Islands and Honduras. Even
between 2002 and 2004 many Cubans traveled as tourists to Russia, some
asked for political asylum at the layover at the Barajas airport and for
those arriving in Moscow it was harder. Some managed to get documents to
travel to Mexico at astronomical prices, others ended up so far away
they left with a free visa for Sao Tome and Principe in West Africa.

Mexico as a bridge to the United States became the most coveted goal.
The sign of the most persistent "blood, sweat and tears" runs to
Guatemala drawing a geography of pain that is clear proof of the failure
of the Cuban utopia. As Voltaire said: "It has been tried in several
countries not to allow a citizen to leave the nation in which he had the
accident of being born; visibly the meaning of this law is: this country
is so bad and so badly governed that we prohibit every individual from
leaving, for fear that everyone would go."

Those fugitives fleeing from the chronic shortages, repression, lack of
individual human rights and a bleak future, soon crowd into Ecuador
thanks to the close ideological relations between that country and the
island. The Cuban government, as on other occasions, needs a valve to
release the steam from the cauldron and, also, a future source of income
from family remittances. And Quito has become the ideal place from which
to reach Mexico in the long Cuban pilgrimage. From there, groups leave
for Colombia, then Panama, Costa Rice, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala
and Mexico. The flow of Cubans who come from Ecuador to Tapachula, a
migration station in Chiapas, varies between 40 and 50 a day. They are
looking for safe conduct to cross Mexico as a bridge to the Promised Land.

The Cuban diaspora is the most extensive in world history since the Jews
in the time of the Babylonian captivity. This dispersion of wandering
Cubans has grown and accelerated since the "thaw" between Cuba and the
United States, growing still more with the rumor of the imminent repeal
of the Cuban Adjustment Act. It goes without saying that these tropical
pilgrims face hurricanes, sharks, sunstroke, impenetrable jungles,
tumultuous rivers, human trafficking, extortionist police and guerrillas
and thieves…

This Cuban exodus evokes the riskiest travel fictions: The Odyssey by
Homer; the myth of Jason and the Argonauts; Virgil's Aeneid; Jonah and
the Whale; The Lusiadas by Luis Vas de Camoes; Sinbad the Sailor;
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe; Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift; The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe; Moby-Dick by
Melville; The Sphinx of the Ice by Jules Verne; Stevenson's Treasure
Island; Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and other works that do not
fit here.

The Cuban reality exceeds any of these stories no matter how fanciful
and exaggerated their authors have been. In the film Memories of
Underdevelopment, by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, the protagonist paraphrases
Che Guevara when he says: "This great humanity has said enough and has
started to get moving… and will not stop until it gets to Miami…"

Source: The Crossing Of The Desert / 14ymedio, Manuel Pereira |
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-crossing-of-the-desert-14ymedio-manuel-pereira/