BALSEROS (CUBAN RAFTERS)
Escaping Castro.
Running time: 120 minutes. Not rated (mature subject matter). At the Film Forum, Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue.
IN 1994, some 50,000 Cubans tried to cross the sea to the United States, using nothing more than makeshift rafts. Some made it, others didn’t.
For many who did, their American dream turned into a nightmare.
The well-done documentary “Balseros (Cuban Rafters),” by Spanish TV reporters Carlos Bosch and Josep M. Domenech, tracks seven of the refugees, starting with their struggle to get enough money, often as little as $30, to build a rickety raft.
One woman was forced to sell her body. Another had to leave her young daughter behind.
“The only way out is to risk one’s life at sea,” a woman says.
Asked what he wanted in America, a man replies simply: “A house, a car, a good woman.”
Those who made it far enough to be picked up at sea were confined for up to a year at Guantanamo, the U.S. Navy base on Cuba since made famous as a hellish detention site for people caught in the U.S. war on terrorism.
Once in the United States, the balseros (rafters) scattered to places as diverse as The Bronx and Nebraska.
Seven years later, the filmmakers visited the refugees again.
One woman had turned to drugs and confesses that she misses Cuba. Another refugee found comfort in religion. Others seem to have adjusted uneasily to life in the United States.
As for the woman forced to leave her daughter in Cuba, she continues to wait for the day when she will be joined by her child, now 8 years old.