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The journey of two independent journalists from Cuba refugees in Canada

Martha Liset Sánchez and Alberto Corzo escaped from Cuba on a raft after more than a decade practicing independent journalism on the island. The reasons for their departure and the process to be accepted as refugees in Canada, they told the Voice of America.

MIAMI, USA —

After more than a decade practicing independent journalism in Cuba, Alberto Corzo and Martha Liset Sánchez built a rustic boat, left their town of Los Arabos, in the province of Matanzas, and jumped into the sea with their two 12-year-old children. at the beginning of December 2022.

"My wife and I have been practicing independent journalism in Cuba since 2011, denouncing all the shortcomings, the entire level of corruption, the problems within our communities," Corzo explained to the Voice of America from a hotel in Toronto, Canada. where they have been relocated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

But the arrival in the Canadian city was only the final destination.

He explains that they left with fourteen other people from a point on the north coast of Villa Clara (in the center of the country), the journey lasted only six hours until they were intercepted by a United States Coast Guard ship, just 17 miles from Cayo Maratón . From the coast of Florida they were taken out to sea to a Coast Guard ship and from there to Guantánamo to be processed by the IOM as refugees. Five months later, in May, they flew to Jamaica, Panama City, and finally Toronto. They wanted to reach the United States by the same means and as so many Cubans have done for more than six decades.

It is estimated that just over 35,000 Cubans left the island in fragile boats when the so-called rafters crisis broke out in 1994.

I was passed out all the time, they put me on the coast guard passed out, ”says the woman and adds that only her family of four people were granted asylum, the others were returned to Cuba.

“We are proudly rafters,” Corzo emphasizes.

“On one occasion I was summoned to the Colón

(municipality) police unit for a news item denouncing the corruption of the Los Arabos Communist Party when it was led by Anais Martínez Carrión, the party's first secretary,” he recounts.

In a previous VOA report, Sánchez recounted that even her son Raidel was the victim of bullying. In April 2021, a teacher and another woman encouraged the children to attack him.

The journalist said that he complained to the police and the school, but no action was taken.

"The repressors of State Security told me: 'all these problems that the children have at school with the teacher is your fault, if you were not an independent journalist nobody would interfere with your children," Sánchez now recalls.

The Cuban government views independent journalists as "mercenaries" in the service of the United States and other foreign governments. The press in Cuba is controlled by the State. To practice in Cuba, even the foreign press is accredited by the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs. Accredited foreign journalists have been expelled at different stages from the country when the authorities have considered that they exceed the parameters established in accordance with state policy for the press. Today, under the status of political refuge they obtained, they say, they will try to take Raidel "to be treated by a psychiatrist for obsessivecompulsive disorder," they both comment. The US Coast Guard reported that in the month of April of this year the number of more than 6,200 Cuban rafters intercepted in Florida waters in the last six months was already a record, compared to the 6,182 for the entire previous year. "These trips are not only illegal, but also incredibly dangerous," Lt. Conner Ives of the Coast Guard District Seven said in a statement. "No one should risk their life in rough and unsafe boats in unpredictable seas." In April 2022, Corzo reported having been beaten by two unknown individuals in Matanzas after being briefly detained by two police officers.

In a photo shared with VOA, he can be seen in a cast for having suffered a broken clavicle, according to what he denounced. The Voice of America has collected complaints and testimonies for years about the situation of the independent press in Cuba, where the Communist Party persecutes the existence of media outlets that are not affiliated with the government. For many years, human rights activists, members of religious organizations and others within Cuba benefited from the United States Embassy Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), but it was suspended in 2018 and affected the marriage of Corzo and Sánchez . Under the administration of Republican President Donald Trump, the staff at the embassy in Cuba was reduced to the maximum, after the incidents known as the Havana Syndrome and the reports that dozens of diplomats suffered health problems for reasons unknown to date.

In the midst of the shortcomings, Sánchez says, running an independent media outlet and taking care of the housework was not easy.

“It is a difficult task, but it is a task that has already been preceded by other women. Anyone who knows the history of Cuba knows that in our liberation process, which has not yet been completed, Cuban women have had to experience the worst part, ”she affirms.

“The woman is more vulnerable and they [the police authorities] know methods to try to make that woman, for the children, for the family, for the weight, for the role that the woman has in the Cuban home, leave or try to that this woman stop in her work of activism or dissident organizations”, concludes Martha Liset.

The Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) in Matanzas -although it does not usually refer to the independent press in Cuba from its official position-, did not respond to the Voice of America's request for comments.

Note published in Spanish in: VOA English translation/ BDN

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