Lying is not a solution to the balsero dilemma
Al’s Loupe
Lying is not a solution to the balsero dilemma
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
alvaro@progresoweekly.com
Let me tell you about Mr. Mesa. He is 43-years-old. He arrived in the U.S. in 2005.
Mesa is one of the many thousands of Cubans who came here on one of those makeshift boats – more like a raft. Pieces of whatever they could find that floated: tied, glued and hammered together, then launched out to sea.
He spent more than a week in the Florida Straits. Mesa tells me that he now knows what almost 10 days daring the sea feels like. And adds, without any doubt in his voice, he would not try it again.
In fact, he says, there are people who have tried to convince him to bring his daughters and the mother of his children in the same manner. You don’t do that to people you love, he says. And yes, he can afford it. But he would not risk their lives, he assures me.
Mesa misses his children – one now almost 3-years-old. He’s never met her in person. The oldest he talks to by telephone. She wonders, he tells me, why he won’t come visit her anymore. She’s even questioned his love, he says sadly.
In February I wrote that it was “time to allow the balseros to return.” Of the stories I plan to tell, at least till we find solutions to this problem that divides Cuban families living in many corners of this earth, this is one I found fascinating. It also points to another reason why this policy, which Cuban authorities insist on enforcing, makes little sense. Aside from the fact that it’s downright cruel and certainly inhumane.
In my first article on the subject I wrote that “in the late 1990s, a White House official, in a conversation with Cuban Ambassador in Washington Dagoberto Rodriguez, warned that a massive exodus of balseros could be construed as an act of aggression against the U.S. and therefore an act of war.” I get that. In fact, like I mentioned in that piece, I empathize with the Cuban authorities. Based on the U.S. record of little respect for most any other country’s sovereignty, Cuba has a right to be as alert as a cat.
But the facts of what actually occurs make me wonder why the Cubans don’t deal with the problem more directly, and with the intent of solving this problem sooner rather than later.
Why can’t Mesa visit his children, and the mother of his children, in Cuba?
This is a case where the policy borders on the absurd. Take a look at it. Mesa arrived in the U.S. in 2005. By 2006 he had updated his Cuban passport and by 2007 he was traveling to Cuba. At the time he’d do it more than once a year. He was living in Georgia. He worked and saved his money to visit his child and the mother of his daughter, who live in Manzanillo, Cuba.
In the process the mother of his children became pregnant again with who is now his 3-year-old daughter. But in 2010, he made his biggest mistake, he told me.
“I am not a liar,” he says. So when I arrived in Cuba, upon entering the airport, for the first time I was asked by the immigration officer when and how I had left Cuba. “I was honest,” he said, and told him that he was a balsero.
He was sent back on the next plane to the U.S. He has not seen his family since. And as he explained to me, “If I would have lied, told them I was one of the thousands who win the exit lottery, I probably would still be visiting Cuba a couple of times a year without any problems.”
Mesa’s situation is not unique. He assures me there are other balseros who travel regularly. They have not been identified as balseros, though, he insists.
He ends this conversation posing what is probably his most troublesome perception of the situation: “Cases like mine,” he says, “make me wonder if Cuban authorities would rather have me lie to them…”
As if lying is the solution to this problem.
