Number of Cuban Rafters Reaching Florida Shore Hits a Record

The number of Cubans reaching Florida by risking their lives at sea in small boats and rafts hit a record Saturday as people flee their island’s political repression and deepening poverty.

No one knows for sure how many have died trying to cross the 90-mile Florida Straits between Cuba and the United States. But those who make it safely find relatives, friends and a social net that offers them homes, jobs and the one thing they want the most: Freedom.

“Is good to be here, because I’m free,” said Carlos Alberto Verde, trying out his few words of English while waiting to be processed at a refugee resettlement agency last week.

The previous record number of rafters--excluding the 1980 Mariel boat lift that brought 125,000 Cuban refugees to the United States--was set last year at 2,557. That record was exceeded on Saturday, with 2,560 successfully making the trip so far in 1993.

A Coast Guard spokeswoman took the occasion to warn against the hazardous voyage.

“The most important thing we stress is that is a terribly dangerous journey, and the Coast Guard stresses not to do it,” said Petty Officer Simone Adair in Miami. “The waters are treacherous. There’s no assurance they’re going to be located. The sun is brutal, and there are sharks.”

But that did not stop Verde. Last Monday he got into a stolen boat after dark with 16 relatives and friends on a beach outside Havana. They reached the Florida Keys the next day.

Two days after that, Verde, 27, sat with his parents, who earlier had settled in Miami.

“I left because I didn’t like the (Communist) system,” said Verde, who was unemployed before leaving Cuba, “and because of the hunger.”

A few feet away, a member of the Church World Service staff offered new arrivals box lunches, filled in immigration forms and arranged for Social Security cards.

The staff members are experienced at resettling Cuban refugees. One is Ernesto Sanchez, who left Cuba with six friends on a leaky raft six months ago.

“We were so worried because my country’s getting, uh, maybe a civil war, something like that; and the government policy is a very wrong policy, oppressing the people,” said Sanchez, 29.

“Here I got freedom. I got my job. I got my room, I rent a room. I got my car. I got my friends. I got my freedom. I can live and work without any worry or anything. I don’t have to steal anything.”

Sanchez and his friends were picked up at sea by the crew of a freighter, transferred to a Coast Guard cutter and dropped off at Key West, Fla.