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 Editorials | Issues | September 2007 
US-Anticuban Law: Vendetta in Cancun
 Prensa Latina
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 |  | Cubans from Miami come in loaded with money and buy boats, fuel, rent houses, stroll through the town with satellite phones and authorities here do nothing.
- Alvaro Burgos |  | |
Havana - Otherwise peaceful and sunny Cancun in Mexico was chosen as stage of a bloody battle between illegal Cuban immigrant smugglers, reveals Granma daily on Thursday.
The business involving boats with powerful outboard motors, capable of picking up 40 illegal Cuban immigrants in the island to take them to Cancun, from where they go on to the US border.
US officials quoted by Reuters estimate that 89 percent of all Cubans entering the US are doing so from Mexican territory, instead of faring the risk of crossing the Florida Strait.
The price between 8,000 and 10,000 dollars charged by traffickers for the trip is reserved for the few who can pay. The illegal business is known to be managed by Cuban Americans and prospers under the noses of authorities from both countries.
Mexican businessman Alvaro Burgos, owner of a fishing cooperative in Isla Mujeres (islet barely four miles long facing Cancun) said "Cubans from Miami come in loaded with money and buy boats, fuel, rent houses, stroll through the town with satellite phones and authorities here do nothing."
They have even used hurricane shelters as safe houses to bring-in and take-out Cubans before everyone´s eyes, he said. The Attorney General of the Republic was not available for comments on this issue, said the British news agency.
The traffic of illegal Cuban immigrants is leaving a bloody trail in Cancun, the stage of violent score settling between rival gangs.
The corpse of a Cuban American supposedly involved in the contraband, appeared riddled with bullets at the beginning of September. Shortly after, the police found the bodies of his girlfriend and other two Mexicans in the bottom of a well near Cancun.
The traffickers have set up headquarters in the tourist center of Isla Mujeres, Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Merida. According to local sources they are moving about 100 persons per week and can rake in about a million dollars in one month.
Bello Rodriguez, attorney general of the state of Quintana Roo, told reporters recently that smuggling operations are becoming a problem of national security. The Migration National Institute said the number of undocumented Cubans arrested in Mexico had passed from 254 in 2002 to 2,205 last year.
Already in the first half of 2007 a total of 876 Cubans, of which 217 were deported to the island.
A diplomat in Havana said he suspects the problem is even worse than expected and that smugglers are joining forces with organized crime in Yucatan to run drugtraffic and prostitution networks.
The Mexican route has been found more encouraging for Cuban illegal immigrants who enter freely into the US, like terrorist Luis Posada Carriles who used the same illegal network based in Miami. |
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