Today on patrol with the US Coast Guard, as you have never seen it before, the epic tragedy
of two nations whose people are literally dying to reach our shores.
That plus the forbidden side of the Forbidden Island, how the ladies of the night have invaded
Red Havana.
The hero calls them gusano, worms, desperate Cubans determined to escape their homeland.
Either they're put in prison there or they die in the attempt.
This fall Haitian boat people commandeered national headlines and some sympathy.
Thousands have fled Haiti and risked their lives to come to America.
Many have been snatched from the jaws of death by the Coast Guard.
And for years another group of refugees has braved the high seas in flimsy craft to risk
life for a chance at freedom.
Cubans also dying to get to America.
Don't do it.
It's suicidal.
Now it can be told, tempest-tossed from teeming shores, voyage of the dam.
Our cameras go inside a forbidden border to expose this dirty picture of Castro's crumbling
Cuba.
The oldest profession in the world is the newest street scene in Havana and the latest
red warning for Cuban communists.
There are times when I'm given goods like pants, lipsticks, things that you can't get.
Now it can be told, comrades of the night.
Welcome everybody, I'm Roldo Rivera and we're back in Florida, more correctly just off the
coast of Florida aboard the United States Coast Guard Cotameta Gorda.
You know since Castro triumphed in Cuba, that's more than 30 years ago, the men and women
of the Coast Guard have really seen it all.
They've had a front row to an unfolding human tragedy.
They've been fighting the drug wars and now they've been flucking thousands of helpless
refugees from the sometimes angry seas.
Men, women, children, Cubans, now Haitians, people risking everything including their
lives in a desperate bid for freedom.
I want to talk to some of the men and women of the Coast Guard now and find out some of
their more vivid memories.
Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a Glenn Buckland.
Okay Glenn, what have you seen?
What are the things, images that really stick in your mind?
I've seen 45, 50 foot sailing vessels crowded with children from 12 months to old men, most
of them without any clothes whatsoever, no navigation gear, no radios, no nothing, heading
in the general direction of the United States.
What would have happened but for your intervention to those people?
If the Coast Guard had come along and do something about this, they would not have made it.
The boats would have been swamped and capsized, overturned in the ocean on their way up here.
They would not have made it.
So what do you feel about your mission?
I think our mission is a good mission and we are doing what we have to do.
It's a job that has to be done and we're doing it.
Okay Lieutenant, introduce yourself please.
I'm Lieutenant Chris Sennett from Columbia, South Carolina.
Lieutenant, what's the most dramatic thing you've seen recently?
Most recently was when we came across a Haitian sailboat at night in about four foot seas.
We could not see the vessel, it was such a black night.
We picked them up on radar and then we had to intercept using a night vision scope.
When we got to within about 100 yards of the vessel, we turned on the searchlights and
were able to spot them.
It's a real touchy moment.
We can't afford to upset the people on board the boat.
They might rush to one side of the vessel and cause it to capsize when they see us come
upon them.
First, we have to try to establish a communication with them and let them know that yes, we are
going to be taking them off of their vessel and really have to set up control in the beginning
to make it a smooth operation.
When you see the people coming off, you really feel that they must have had some very, very
strong feelings to force them to put themselves in this situation.
Small boats, heavily overloaded.
We were fortunate this particular night.
The seas were only running about four feet.
That was the calmest we had seen in nine days of patrolling.
It's amazing to you that they would risk so much because the odds must be so long.
The odds are terrible.
I think that with that particular vessel, as soon as the seas had picked up to over
six to eight feet, they would have been swamping the deck of the vessel, washing people off.
There are so many people on board.
They're hanging on at the top sides.
They would not have been able to hang on, and the vessel would have wound up swamping
and sinking.
OK, Lieutenant, introduce yourself, please.
My name is Lieutenant J.G.
James Bous from Orleans, California.
Long way from home.
Yeah, it's quite a long way.
It's definitely a different world down here.
So what do you think about the different world you're seeing out on the high seas?
That's definitely gives you, I guess, an insight into there's another world out there besides
the United States and what you're used to here at home, and that the whole world doesn't
have maybe what we have here.
And as a lot of people probably said, the amazing thing is you see those people out
there.
What are the reasons behind what they're doing?
Why would they risk so much?
What have you seen that really sticks out in your mind?
It's amazing to me when you come upon, say, a very small sailboat who, in the United States,
you might put approximately five people on it to go out for a weekend and have a good
time.
You look in the holes of some of these, and these people seem like they're stacked like
cordwood, and it's amazing that some of them probably don't know how to swim.
They probably don't know what they're in for when they get on that boat, how long that
journey is.
It may have been the first time on a boat.
It's just incredible.
What do you think your most vivid memory is?
First, introduce yourself.
I'm Stephen Jason Tellingheeson from Rapid City, South Dakota.
My most vivid memory of all the operations we've done down here in the Southeast U.S.
is seeing the little children of Haiti on these vessels, not children, I should say,
infants, little, possibly children, born on board these boats with 100 other people.
A few months ago, we did a case where one lady threw a baby to me, and then she wanted
to get off so desperate, and she wanted to get out and have room.
It gets me concerned inside and worried for these people that, you know, such a small
baby, the children on these boats, and they're not getting the chance that other people got
the chance to, you know, be healthy and have them, I mean, on board.
The children, it's just not sanitary for them.
Did you ever think when you joined the Coast Guard that you'd be seeing sites like this?
No, I sure didn't.
I really wasn't sure what I'd be seeing, but this definitely wasn't it.
Okay, Petty Officer, would you introduce yourself?
I'm Petty Officer Larry Burkhart from Fayville, North Carolina.
You're a veteran, how many years in the Coast Guard?
15 years.
Did you ever in 15 years think you'd be seeing what you've been seeing out here on the high
seas?
No, not from that type of country, but I have, the earlier years, been involved with a Mario
Bolia from Cuba.
The Cuban refugees, now you're seeing them from Haiti?
Yes, that's correct.
What's your most vivid memory of, you know, what aspect of this whole experience sticks
out in your mind?
The best part that sticks out in my mind, I would say, is the smiles on their faces.
The joy just seeing the Coast Guard vessel in the rising, safety just at hand to them.
A lot of the vessels that they're on is just, you know, very poor conditions, unsee worthy,
and seeing us come to the rescue of the Coast Guard is a very, puts a lot of joys and smiles
to their faces.
They think that when they get here, they just think we're one of the best goddesses to ever
ride to them.
That's a pretty good feeling, huh?
Oh, most definitely.
You know, although the Haitian situation with the refugees is the one that's getting most
of the attention recently, the Cubans are still coming.
People leaving the ashes of the Castro revolution, risking their lives in an attempt to make
it to the United States.
That story's next.
Stay with us.
Castro calls them gusanos, worms, desperate Cubans determined to escape the world.
They're putting prison there for they die in the attempt.
Now it can be told, tempest talk from teeming shores, boy is this a damn.
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Welcome back to the Coast Guard Cut-A-Matter Gorda.
The officers and men have been sharing their inspiring stories of the rescue of thousands
of Haitian refugees from leaky boats on these high seas.
And although the Haitians are getting most of the attention recently, the Cubans are
still coming.
People literally willing to die in their quest for freedom.
Our senior correspondent, Krista Bradford, got inside Cuba for this exclusive look at
the high cost of freedom.
Thanks Geraldo.
They are called rafters, lancheros, but sometimes Fidel Castro prefers to call them gusanos,
worms.
They are brave young Cuban men and women who dare leave Cuba under the cover of darkness
on practically anything that floats.
Some say that is suicide, the Cuban version of Russian roulette.
It is Sunday mass in the Jimenitas on the outskirts of Havana.
The people of this community all have relatives or friends who have left Cuba on makeshift
rafts.
They come to the church to pray to the Virgin, the protector of those at sea.
They come to pray that their loved ones will make it to the United States.
But at sea the elements are unforgiving and the statistics are grim.
So far this year the US Coast Guard has rescued more than 1800 Cuban rafters, more than triple
the number for all of 1990.
But for all those who make it, there are at least as many that don't.
Seventy five percent of those that try to get out of Cuba using rafts and other devices
do not make it.
Either they are put in prison there or they die in the attempt.
Jose Basulto is president of Brothers to the Rescue.
It is a volunteer air patrol funded by Miami's Cuban community to help alleviate a desperate
situation.
If I was to give advice to rafters, potential rafters, that is on what to do, I'll tell
them exactly what I have been told myself by other rafters that have made it here to
Miami.
Don't do it.
It's a chance that you may regret them taking.
It's suicidal.
Suicidal for the rafters, embarrassing for the Cuban government.
That is why when we came to Jaimnitas the Cuban police wanted us to leave.
Officers detained us, checked our passports, questioned our reasons for being there and
ultimately ordered us out saying we were in a restricted military zone.
Still, we returned with a camera hidden in a bag to interview Alonchero.
Oswaldo Cuellar left on a raft with his brother and his son, but the raft broke apart.
He lost the others and nearly drowned.
I had been swimming 48 hours in the Gulf of Mexico without a raft and this is when I injured
my legs.
My pants were rubbing up and down.
I also hurt my hands, waist and hips.
And what did this take?
The saw from the rubbing of the ropes on the raft.
Did he see any sharks while he was out there?
Oswaldo and his wife Maria say their only hope is that a ship rescued their son and
the others.
I have hope that they will be found in another country.
I go on living because of the hope they will be found and I will get news that they are
in the United States.
I pray a lot every night.
There isn't a moment of the day just thinking about it.
Oswaldo and others say that they are willing to risk death because life here has become
so unbearable.
Cubans are living through the worst economic crisis since the revolution of 1959.
The Soviet upheaval of 1991 and more cutbacks in aid from Moscow are bound to make things
worse.
Already, bread is rationed.
The supply of other consumer goods is as short as the lines are long.
So who's to blame for the suffering of the rafters?
We are, according to Fidel Castro.
He says he isn't keeping his people from leaving Cuba.
The U.S. is refusing to allow greater numbers of Cubans in legally.
Cuba has always used a policy, not an explicit policy, but the policy of dealing with discontent
in the island by releasing a safety valve and that safety valve has always been immigration.
The U.S. government has not been very forthcoming in allowing large numbers of Cubans to leave
Cuba since 1981.
Still too many poor Cubans, the good life in America is looking better every day.
They see in the United States the future, a hope, satisfaction.
There, they know that if they work, if they struggle, they can get everything.
But here, no, there is no future for the young people.
They are very persecuted.
They certainly are prosecuted if they try to leave by raft.
Oswaldo spent eight months in jail when he was caught trying to escape Cuba the first
time.
But even though the wounds of his latest attempt at freedom have not yet fully healed, he vows
that he will soon try again.
Christopher Atford will be back in a moment with a report on some of what these Cuban
rafters are trying to leave behind.
I think it's a very interesting symptom of the collapse of Castro's regime.
For the first time in more than 30 years, Havana has its red light district back and
it's thriving on our green back.
We'll meet these comrades of the night when we return in a moment.
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Seventy to a hundred miles that way when Fidel Castro swept into power in Cuba in 1959, he
swept all the prostitutes off the streets.
But it's tough times now for Castro's Cuba and the women are once more selling their
bodies on the streets of Havana.
Krista Bradford now reports on the ladies they call the flowers of the night.
Thanks, Geraldo.
One of the oldest forms of capitalism has returned to Havana, prostitution.
But since before the revolution of 1959, have there been so many ladies of the evening so
blatantly working the streets?
They are always poor, usually young and sometimes desperate.
But Cuban prostitutes do not yet seem as hardened as their American counterparts.
They are not drug addicts.
They do not have pimps.
They are Cuban women who want what they haven't got.
Ideally, U.S. dollars.
But if money itself is not available, these women are willing to trade sex for just about
anything money can buy.
The money I earn is very uncertain.
There are times when I'm given goods like pants, lipsticks, things that you can't get,
especially the young girls involved in this.
They do it because they know this is how they can get the good things in life.
The good things that we take for granted, they're willing to sell themselves for.
What is the lowest that is charged in Havana for a sexual act?
The minimum is a Coca-Cola.
Before the revolution in 1959, a corrupt dictatorship and the American mafia controlled Cuba.
Havana was the Las Vegas of the Caribbean, and the biggest money makers were gambling
and prostitution.
What a wonderful vacation.
Back then, Castro was enraged by foreigners exploiting Cuban women.
But now, it is happening all over again.
Cuba's economy is in ruins, destroyed by the double onslaught of the U.S. trade embargo
and severe cutbacks in Soviet aid.
So now the tourists are being invited back to Havana to spend a little money, have a
good time.
The task is to attempt to get the resources from the tourists, and those who are, particularly
those who are women and who do not have perhaps other means to obtain those resources, resort
to prostitution.
Cubans are reluctant to speak publicly about anything controversial, but one of the most
famous Cuban singers has written a song about the street walkers.
It's called Las Flores de la Quinta Avenida, the Flowers of Fifth Avenue.
The singer is Silvio Rodriguez, Cuba's most popular performer and one who feels deeply
about the plight of the prostitutes.
This is a song dedicated to the girls who wait on Fifth Avenue, who wait for the tourists.
It's a new problem here, a product of tourism.
On the other hand, we have to submit ourselves to tourism because we have no one else to
do business with.
And so they do business along Havana's Fifth Avenue, along the waterfront, in front of
tourist hotels and even in hotel swimming pools.
This woman is wearing a swimsuit emblazoned with the slogan, I love sex.
This is not a song that condemns them.
It is a song that I think is a bit sour, but that they understand.
It's a bad problem.
It bothers me a lot.
It certainly bothers the Cuban police.
Recently they rounded up a couple hundred suspected prostitutes.
Those convicted of prostitution in Cuba are sent to prison.
No problems with the law are by no means confined to the courts.
There are cops who take your money.
There are cops who put the girls on the street to work for them as agents or informants.
For Sonia, it has been a hard life.
Now all she hopes for is a better life, a different life for her daughter.
It hurts because of my daughter.
I have always struggled so that she would not have to go through what I have gone through,
but I am not sure about her.
I hope I have the strength to make a difference.
Isn't it sad that vice should be considered the price of freedom?
I'll be back with the skipper of the Coast Guard Kodamata Gorda in a moment.
Stay with us.
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We'll be back with more from the Coast Guard Cut-A-Metagorda in a moment but first let's
take a look at what's coming up on the next edition of Now It Can Be Told.
What's the world on fast forward to democracy, how long can Fidel Castro last?
His politics are like Hitler.
Now It Can Be Told.
If this rebel army has its way Fidel will be gone by spring.
We have to make sure we don't make any noise.
They've already started their raids on Cuba.
Now they're training for the big kill.
They're willing to commit any act.
Inside Alpha 66.
What we've uncovered.
Now It Can Be Told.
We're back on board the United States Coast Guard Cut-A-Metagorda.
It is my honor and privilege now to have the helm courtesy of Lieutenant John Kaptinsky.
Kaptinsky.
Captain Kaptinsky.
Kaptinsky they call him around here.
Captain what do you say to the critics who say the Haitians, the Cubans, they should
just stay home.
Why come to our country when we've got enough problems on our own?
Just stay away.
Keep out.
Well we're all though you really can't blame the Haitians and the Cubans for coming over
here to exert their power.
I really got off as far as the politics and stuff.
I stay out of that and I'm just doing my job out here.
Right now your job is search and rescue.
That's correct.
Walking refugees from the angry seas.
That's correct.
We're all though the Coast Guard's been doing that for 200 years now and just continuing
on with that tradition.
Hell of a job and thank you for your help.
Thank you.
Pleasure to have you aboard.
That's it for now.
I'm Harold Orrathow.
Violent.
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