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| In this Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014 photo, Aliandi Garcia shows a photo of his uncle Jose Ramon Acosta, standing in the background on his mobile phone, who drowned during his journey to the United States, in Miami. The bodies surfaced near a popular South Florida beach: four men, all in the height of their youth, with nothing to identify them. Around the same time, Ramon Saul Sanchez began receiving phone calls: a group of nine Cuban migrants, including one pregnant woman, had left the island a week before. ALAN DIAZ — AP Photo |
By CHRISTINE ARMARIO
MIAMI — The bodies surfaced 20
miles from a popular South Florida beach: Four men, still youthful.
Their remains were badly deteriorated, bitten by sharks, the faces
unrecognizable.
One had a horseshoe-shaped scar on his head. Two
bore tattoos — one with a spider on his back, another with a tiger on
his arm. The fourth wore orange briefs and a gold-colored watch.
The
Coast Guard delivered them to the Broward County Medical Examiner's
Office — four more among the thousands who have died trying to cross the
turbulent Florida Straits.
These bodies are often too exposed to
saltwater and sea life to provide visual clues. Politics has made
identifying the remains of Cuban migrants even more difficult: Because
of the five-decade diplomatic stalemate between the U.S. and Cuba,
pathologists in Florida can't get matching dental records and DNA from
relatives on the island.
"The standard means of identification
aren't going to work," said Larry Cameron, operations director for the
Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department.
Instead,
investigators must piece together a puzzle of scars, tattoos, surgeries
and clothing. In a best-case scenario, U.S. family members can be found
to give DNA samples and get some closure. Florida law prohibits
cremating unidentified bodies, so some bones are stored for years. The
Broward morgue has bodies dating back to the 1970s.
Many others
are buried in paupers' cemeteries after DNA is extracted, labeled only
by a number, "and we never know that those rafters didn't get lost at
sea," said Ramon Saul Sanchez, president of the Democracy Movement exile
group.
Identifying these bodies has become a priority again for
Florida's medical examiners amid a 75-percent increase this year in the
number of Cubans trying to cross by sea. At least 3,722 Cubans have been
intercepted at sea or made it to shore in the last fiscal year.
Most
travel on rafts of wood, metal and Styrofoam, powered by a makeshift
motor. With little or no navigational tools, they can get lost at sea,
succumbing to dehydration far from shore. Some vessels are so small that
sharks can tip them over. The vast majority who die simply disappear.
The
U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted 72,771 Cubans at sea in the last three
decades. Thousands of others made it to U.S. shores or were prevented
by Cuban authorities from leaving. Scholars estimate at least 1 in 4
Cuban rafters don't survive, which could mean 18,000 have died.
Holly
Ackerman, a Duke University researcher who has extensively studied
Cuban rafters, said the U.S. and Cuba could help identify the missing
and dead by comparing the names of those who left the island and those
entered the United States, but have never done so.
Sanchez, for
his part, has written to federal officials asking that the U.S. and Cuba
establish a process to cooperate and identify rafters who are found
dead.
In one of the worst Cuban rafter tragedies in recent years,
32 migrants left this August from Manzanillo, on the island's southern
shore, and were stranded at sea for nearly a month. Only 15 were still
alive when Mexican fishermen found them in early September. Two of those
later died. The others perished at sea, their bodies thrown overboard,
or tried to swim ashore. Their remains have not been found.
The
four bodies recovered off Florida on Aug. 24 received less attention.
There were no survivors to tell how long they had been at sea or where
they had come from.
Then Sanchez began receiving calls: A group of
nine people, including one pregnant woman, had disappeared five days
earlier. All were friends and neighbors from San Antonio de los Banos, a
town of 46,000 some 20 miles southwest of Havana.
When a group of people suddenly disappears on the island, Cubans know it likely means they've fled on a raft.
School
teacher Junier Hernandez, 32, left a letter saying he was leaving and
that his father should care for his 8-year-old son. Lester Martinez, 27,
told his family the day before that he would leave on a raft.
"Think about what you're doing, it's crazy," his relatives implored.
"Trust me," Martinez insisted, according to his cousin.
Thirty-five-year-old
Jose Ramon Acosta told no one he was leaving, but he'd seen his nephew
Aliandi Garcia, 24, leave a year before. Garcia made it to Miami, where
he got a call from relatives back in Cuba: "Your uncle left for the
U.S.," they said. "Watch the television for any news."
Days
passed. Relatives called the Cuban coast guard, but they had no
information. The U.S. Coast Guard had not picked up any rafters matching
their description.
Finally, Sanchez learned the Coast Guard had recovered four bodies off Hollywood Beach.
He
gathered the U.S. relatives together — some distant cousins who had
never met the rafters before — and went to the Broward County morgue,
where investigators shared the bad news: The bodies were no longer
recognizable. Some had body parts missing with "distinct semi-circular
teeth impressions" along the edges of the tissue.
Chief Medical
Examiner Craig Mallak said he contacted the Coast Guard about obtaining
dental records and DNA from their relatives, but was told: "Until we
have diplomatic relations with Cuba, it's very difficult."
"If you
have a complete dental match, it's as good as a fingerprint or DNA,"
Mallak said. "But we weren't going to get that in this case."
So
investigators spent hours with the families, collecting potential clues:
how tall the men were, their hair color, whether they had any markings
on their skin.
They learned that Garcia's uncle had surgery for
epileptic seizures matching the shape and spot of Acosta's scar. The
next piece of information removed any doubt: Investigators showed Garcia
a picture of a gray shirt with a red Puma logo on it. It was the same
shirt Garcia had given his uncle before he'd left on a raft himself.
That night, he broke the news to their family in Cuba. His grandmother began to scream: "My son is dead! My son is dead!"
Two
of the other rafters, Alberto Mesa, 25, and Enrique Milanes, 45, were
identified by their tattoos. Mesa was the father of a 2-year-old who
sold hot dogs and had attempted to leave the island by raft at least
four or five times before, his aunt said.
One of the only things
distinguishing the fourth body was the gold-colored Orient brand watch,
clouded by seawater that seeped under the glass covering the hour and
minute hands. Hernandez's Miami relatives immediately recognized it as a
present given to Hernandez's father several years earlier.
"It
was just horrible," said Hernandez's cousin, Andres Diaz. "With a normal
death, it's over with immediately. But this is a long, painstaking
process that seems to never end."
Martinez and four others who
apparently left with them are still missing. And two of the recovered
bodies remain in the county morgue.
Garcia, who rents a room in a
trailer and struggles to get by on restaurant work after one year in
Miami, said he can't afford to cremate or bury his uncle's remains.
Mesa's family would like to bury him in Cuba, but that will cost
thousands of dollars they do not have.
Diaz said his family plans to bury Hernandez's ashes in Miami.
He
has a small headshot image of the cousin he never met, showing
Hernandez dressed in a black suit and shiny gray tie, his short dark
hair pushed back with gel. The photo was taken for a passport the Cuban
government denied, Diaz said.
"He died trying to come to this country," Diaz said. "We're going to bury him here."
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