Cubans Film Crowded Sea Voyage to Florida, Running into Other ‘Rafters’ Along the Way

A group of Cuban refugees recorded their perilous maritime journey to Florida, publishing the videos on Tuesday showing their homemade vessel on the high seas – and encounters with at least two other rafts.

The balseros, or “rafters,” as Cubans refer to them, are part of a growing exodus of Cubans feeling communism and its inevitable results: mass food shortages, a growing electricity crisis, uncontrolled spread of disease, violent government repression, and a total lack of self-determination. The administration of far-left President Joe Biden, which has tried repeatedly to offer the communist regime concessions that help it remain in power, has taken a firm hand in deporting Cubans who attempt to reach America by sea, though it has been far more lenient with Cubans who pay Mexican human traffickers to reach the American southern border.

Loisel De León Morales, one of the group of 22 people who arrived at the Marquesa Keys after about 21 hours, documented the journey on his cell phone and discussed the planning and execution of their escape with the Cuban site Cubanos por el Mundo on Wednesday. He posted the videos of the journey on Tuesday to his Facebook profile with the caption, “we reached the land of liberty with God’s favor.”

“We did it, Marquesa Keys in 21 hours thanks to the lord who from the beginning placed his powerful hand. Finally, I can sing the song of the champion,” he wrote.

The videos show a small boat, which De León later said his group built custom for the journey, on the high seas in the Straits of Florida. At one point in the journey, the group encounters a separate makeshift speedboat appearing to carry about 20 people, asking them where they are from and shouting, “follow us!” so that they wouldn’t wreck, noting that they had a compass. De León later stated that they encountered two separate vessels on the high seas and he believed that the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted them.

The videos then show the group landing at the Marquesa Keys, an uninhabited set of small islands close to Key West. When they get there, two other boats are in the sand – one abandoned, with food and some sort of drink that appeared fresh, and another with its passengers still around. The second boat had the name “The Vikings” handwritten across its side and appeared to be decorated with the skull of a goat or a sheep on its front tip.

“These people are crazy, this is – look at this, man, this is just foam!” De León can be heard saying about “The Vikings” ship, which appears to be made of styrofoam or a similar material. One of its passengers takes a small, credit-card-sized American flag out of his pocket and cheers, to which De León shouts, “USA!,” pronouncing it as a full word.

It is customary for balseros to name their vessels, often with a topical theme. Many chose, for example, to name their rafts after leftist President Barack Obama during his tenure in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the U.S. Coast Guard and express gratitude for what they initially thought were policies meant to help the Cuban people (in reality, the Obama “thaw” with the Castro regime caused outsized political violence and poverty on the island).

De León later granted an interview on Wednesday to Cubanos por el Mundo in which he noted that his boat had the Bible verse Philippians 4:13 written on its side: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

De León narrated the month-long process of building the speedboat without the Cuban communist regime arresting them and keeping it safe during Hurricane Ian. The 26-year-old noted his birthday passed on October 14 and he “celebrated” in the woods of Bahía Onda, Artemisa province, the Havana suburb where they built the boat in secret.

“We all got together one day and started talking and agreed that the solution to our problems was to get out of Cuba,” he told Cubanos por el Mundo, “because the blackouts are driving us crazy, mosquitos biting us, you can’t sleep, dengue gets you because you don’t even have a fan to sleep with air conditioner … your head hurts and they prescribe you a medication and you have to buy it from the third parties because the government has no way of selling you any medication.”

“The Cuban has no right to vote, no right to anything in that country,” he explained, noting that “the majority of Cubans” voted against a recent government “referendum” on same-sex marriage, but the communists implemented it anyway, a way of whitewashing the internment of any suspected LGBT people in murderous labor camps during Fidel Castro’s reign, alongside suspected Christians and other “undesirables.”

“Another thing is nutrition … eating an egg today is a luxury,” De León lamented, “something simply that anyone can have anywhere in the world… its a luxury to eat an egg.”

De León complimented the U.S. Coast Guard highly for treating the Cubans better than the Cuban government itself.

“They called us over and they said [in English] ‘Welcome to America,’ everybody happy, getting on the ship, then they took us to Key West,” he recalled. “Tremendous attention – here in the United states the police treats you – well, let’s say this, we are immigrants and they treated us like American citizens, truly.”

“The attention was special. They gave us hamburgers, they gave us food, water, they even gave us lollipops, candy – we had a better time there [in Coast Guard custody] than in Cuba,” he noted.

De León concluded with a message to his fellow Cubans: “get out of there.”

“If I need to upload a plan, the dimensions of a ship, amount of gasoline, I’ll do it,” he promised.

While the Biden administration has done little to discourage Cubans from coming to the United States by land – where they have to pay exorbitant fees to Mexican drug cartels, coyotes (people smugglers), and other organized criminals – it has enthusiastically urged Cubans not to attempt the journey by sea, which they can do without bankrolling crime syndicates.

“The time is never right to attempt migration by sea. To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas warned last year after the nationwide July 11 protests, which launched a wave of civil unrest that has yet to cease. “Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States.”

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