After six days at sea on a nine-foot boat, 11 men, one teenage girl, and a dog named Chiquitica made it to Miami Beach from Cuba. As the group runs up to the shore, they are cheered on. One man, who is as Miami as you can get, addressed the group by saying, “You guys made it, bro! Qué bien.” It’s actually a super touching video, and one that even impressed Vanessa Ruiz, the Phoenix newscaster who stood up for herself after she was criticized for saying Spanish-language words in Spanish.
Location is everything.
Posted by Vanessa Ruiz on Tuesday, September 15, 2015
The Miami Herald reports the group came from Villa Clara in central Cuba. They had planned their trip for about a month. The first time they were going to flee, there was bad weather and they decided against it. They set out on Sept. 10 with only peanuts, nuts, and water. They ran out of food and water by Monday, but by then, they could see the lights. One of the men, Eduardo Manso Vita, said coming to the U.S. was the only way he could help his children. “My children are starving to death,” he told the Herald. “Now I can help them because there are jobs and money here. Long live Obama and everyone who is here!”
Earlier this year, the Sun Sentinel reported that the number of Cuban immigrants had increased this year. At the time, they said that in the first three months of the year, there were 2,701 Cubans that had arrived in South Florida, a 212 percent increase from the year before. Experts said that the increase wasn’t out of the ordinary. This month Efe reported that the number of Cubans coming to the U.S. has continued to increase, citing fear of losing wet-foot, dry-foot privileges as the reason for the influx of Cuban immigrants.