Five cans of condensed milk: That’s the only sustenance Felipe Fortun and his five companions carried with them in 1994 as they plunged into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Cuba.
Recently, with his native country roiled by an oil blockade and reports of aggressive U.S. intervention in the offing, Mr. Fortun recounted the journey to America—his third attempt to escape the island. His group rented a room on the beach near Havana and assembled their raft, which consisted of two large inner tubes taken from tractors fastened together with wooden beams. At 2 a.m., in the dark of night, they hoisted the unwieldy raft on their shoulders and clambered over a vast beach.
When they finally arrived at the water, the waves made it difficult for them to climb aboard. The winded compatriots paddled for hours until the sun rose, only to discover they had traveled but a short distance from the shore. They heard a Cuban coast guard ship approaching, so they laid low and remained unnoticed thanks to the choppy waters.
Days passed. They had lost several gallons of water in their struggle near the shore, so they strictly rationed what was left. They had heard it could take weeks to arrive or be found by a U.S. ship. Mr. Fortun described hallucinating that they were floating down a river lined with plantain trees. Several days in, members of the group at times didn’t recognize each other and slipped into paranoia.
“Who are you? When did you get here?”
They caught a good, northerly wind, which sparked their hopes. But it faded. They argued with each other and cried.
Days later, Mr. Fortun said they were discovered by a plane. It was Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based nonprofit founded by Cuban exiles that led search-and-rescue efforts at the time to aid Cubans making their way to the United States. The plane came close enough to drop a water-sealed backpack with apples and instructions.
Some time after, a ship arrived to rescue them, and in Key West, the group was warmly welcomed by Floridians, including a robust Cuban community.
Had they arrived in the last year, things would have looked different.
On the first day of his second term, President Trump signed an executive order that suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program indefinitely. Months later, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced that because of the Trump administration’s suspension of previous agreements, it could no longer partner with the federal government to resettle refugees.
This year, the administration has set the refugee cap at a record-low 7,500, with most recipients being white South Africans. Despite these developments, the need for individuals to seek refuge in the United States has not abated. In many cases, the need has only become more critical.
Cuba is an example. The Trump administration hiked up the U.S. embargo with a complete oil blockade after its capture of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. Venezuela had been exporting discounted oil to Cuba, which relies heavily on oil to provide power through its energy grid. Riots and protests have broken out in the wake of the blackouts. The United States allowed Russia to deliver 700,000 barrels of crude oil in late March, according to Reuters, and has pledged to deliver more.
After arriving in the United States, Mr. Fortun settled in Arizona with the help of Catholic Charities Community Services. Catholic Charities had been welcoming and resettling refugees in Arizona since 1979. Much of that changed last year, but they continue to resettle unaccompanied minors (and are always looking for foster parents).
Catholic Charities helped Mr. Fortun find a job and a place to live and navigate immigration paperwork.
“One of the strengths of the refugee programs that we’ve had in Arizona is that we have been pretty diverse in our resettlement,” Joanne Morales, a senior programs director with Catholic Charities Community Services in Phoenix, said. The office has resettled refugees from countries like Afghanistan, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq and Myanmar.
“Even as the numbers and populations have been reduced due to travel bans and low ceilings, it doesn’t change countries’ conditions and circumstances overseas,” Ms. Morales said. “And it doesn’t change the fact that there are still millions of people in refugee camps worldwide. Refugee resettlement into the U.S. was one of the few options that they had for humanitarian relief.”
Historically, Cuban refugees have been warmly welcomed in the United States in part because they are fleeing a communist country after the revolution of 1959. In the following decades, programs and laws like Operation Peter Pan in the early 1960s, the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966 and the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program in 2007 created legal pathways for Cubans to come and remain in the United States, according to Don Kerwin, the vice president of advocacy, research and partnerships with Jesuit Refugee Service U.S.A.
“All of that was a very special relationship that existed for a long time,” Mr. Kerwin said. Things changed with Mr. Trump. In his second term, Mr. Trump ended the family reunification program, for example, which Mr. Kerwin said “supported family unity and was a real safety valve for people for many years.”
“That special relationship with Cuban refugees is pretty much gone,” he said. “That’s the sad story, and it’s hard to believe that it happened.”
Reemberto Rodríguez was 9 years old in 1966, the year he came to the United States from Cuba. He is from a small town near the Bay of Pigs.
Lino, his older brother, stayed behind because he was of age to serve in the Cuban military. His parents stayed with him, which is why Mr. Rodríguez and his younger brother came to the United States with his grandparents. Unfortunately, his grandparents died in Miami just months after they arrived. He and his brother wound up living with his aunt’s family in rural Georgia for the next 15 years, after which his parents and his brother joined them.
“I will never ever be an apologist for the Cuban government,” Mr. Rodríguez said. “But I refuse to carry the hate.”
Mr. Rodríguez, an architect, urban planner and historian, is a professor at the University of Maryland. In 2015, exactly 49 years to the day after he left Cuba, Mr. Rodríguez was able to return. It sparked what he described as a reawakening and led him to develop a study abroad program in Havana to examine Cuban history, architecture and economics.
For “the pain that these people are suffering today because of the electrical system that has failed, the water system that is about to fail and the transportation system that’s failed for decades…there’s a word in español: resolver,” he said. That is to say, the Cuban people make do with what they have. It takes a certain genius to make it work out, Mr. Rodríguez said.
“Cuba is alive and well in the hearts and spirits of the people,” he said before praising “the methodological patience of the Catholic Church.”
After the revolution, the atheist Cuban government suppressed religion. Mr. Rodríguez’s older brother refused to renounce his faith and consequently was forced to serve the maximum amount of time in the military. His beliefs also meant he would not have access to education.
Things changed in 1992 when the Cuban government redefined itself as a secular rather than an atheistic government. The visits of St. John Paul II in 1998, Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and Pope Francis in 2015 illustrate the change.
Fidel Castro later became an atheist, but Mr. Rodríguez noted he was Jesuit-educated. “Even in the darkest hour of the church-state relations in Cuba, it’s nothing compared to what Nicaragua is going through today,” he said, referring to the Central American nation’s crackdown on the Catholic Church.
Still, while the Cuban government did appropriate and steal church property, Mr. Rodríguez said, the church’s influence over the decades has remained pivotal. Today, he described the government as relying on the Catholic Church and other faiths to serve as a social safety net, especially in the care of children and the elderly.
“Since the revolution, Cuba has consistently evolved. They are not static,” Mr. Rodríguez said. “Yes, they have maintained a centralized system, owned by an oligarchy. They are taking more money out of the country than they are investing in it. But you know what? There is a life and culture there, not unlike any other place throughout the world that has an autocratic system. You still have life.”
That life endures despite Cuba being a dysfunctional, one-party system where the press has limited freedoms, he said. But he does not believe Cubans want aggressive U.S. involvement, as pressed by Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“These folks aren’t talking about diplomacy,” Mr. Rodríguez said. “They’re talking about colonialism and control. And I’m not interested in Cuba changing to be a pawn of the United States. Too many people have fought hard for some kind of sovereignty in Cuba for now to say we’re going to be a [U.S.] state.”
Yet Mr. Fortun, who left Cuba nearly 30 years after Mr. Rodríguez, sees it more plainly. He feels the Cuban experiment proves communism does not work and that change is overdue. He wants free elections and for the people of Cuba to decide their form of government. He still has family there, and he said things have only gotten worse since the recent oil blockade.
As a child, Mr. Fortun recalled his family going to the grocery store with a list that allocated how much food they could take—only so much rice, so many eggs, etc. There was never enough. Families would get three tickets to redeem toys for children each year. They could get volleyballs, trains, scooters or bicycles, but there were limited supplies, so few got the more expensive items. Everything was rationed.
“People were starving,” he said. “You could throw a mango seed in the grass, and it would grow, but the government wouldn’t let you. There was nothing private. You could not grow your own food. They controlled everything. They sold everything to other countries.”
Mr. Fortun served in the Cuban military when he was 18, he said, because if he didn’t, the government would put him in jail. Still, from that vantage point, he saw the impact of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Until that time, Cuba had relied heavily on support from the Soviets, he said.
In college, he studied recreational tourism because he wanted to work at a hotel, where workers can get tips. But he dreamed of a better life.
People in Cuba would hear from relatives in the United States regularly, Mr. Fortun said. They knew how much better life could be. When he got on that raft in 1994, he felt his chances of survival were 50/50. He was 23, but he believed the risk was worth it.
Mr. Fortun spoke of the moment he called his mother’s house from Key West. It would have been nearly a week since his family had seen him, though out of fear of putting them in danger, he couldn’t share his plan.
“Luckily, my mother had a phone because not everyone did,” he said. “And, you know, I could hear everyone scream and people were crying. That’s the thing. They’re scared for you. But on the phone call, that’s when everybody finds out you made it.”
Mr. Fortun visited Cuba with his family in 2017. Unfortunately, his mother passed away before she could meet them.
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