Filled with migrants, small boat broke up amid choppy waters
by Daniel González - Jun. 22, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic
It's not every day that a dancer is invited to join a nationally
recognized company after walking through the door and asking for an
audition. Many professional ballet dancers are recruited from around the
world.
But that's not what makes Humberto Bandera's first season as a member of
Ballet Arizona so extraordinary. To get here, Bandera first had to
escape from Cuba on a leaky fishing boat. He nearly drowned.
Bandera is a vivid example of the risks Cubans continue to take fleeing
the communist nation and the success many often find after arriving in
the U.S.
But Bandera's experience is different from that of most other Cubans.
Whether doctors, architects or engineers in Cuba, most end up cleaning
airplanes at Sky Harbor International Airport or toiling in hotels or
factories, earning low wages until they learn enough English to land
better-paying jobs.
"They take the first job they can get," said Ernest Napole, who was a
math professor in Cuba but started as a hotel laundry attendant when he
arrived in Phoenix in 1995. He recently earned a master's degree in
social work and now coordinates the Cuban resettlement program for
Catholic Charities.
Bandera, on the other hand, walked on to Ballet Arizona just two months
after arriving in Arizona.
The slight 24-year-old had been a rising star in Cuba, having danced
with the National Ballet of Cuba.
But after he began learning about the outside world through a friend's
illegal Internet connection, Bandera, a former Communist, grew
disillusioned with the Cuban revolution.
"I started realizing that everything is a lie, that we were trapped,"
Bandera said.
After obtaining a visa on the black market to travel to Haiti in 2007,
Bandera paid smugglers $4,000 to help him cross the border into the
Dominican Republic and from there an additional $3,000 to take him by
boat to Puerto Rico. Friends in Miami fronted the money.
The sea journey that almost cost him his life began at dawn. Bandera was
among a group of 12 Cubans trying to make it to the U.S. from the
Dominican Republic without getting caught at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard
and returned to Cuba.
The group's two Dominican smugglers told them the trip would be easy.
"They said it was going to be in one of those big fast boats, but when
we got there, it was a really small boat," Bandera said.
The small wooden fishing boat powered by an outboard motor had room for
only seven passengers. There were 14 in all, 12 Cubans and the two
smugglers. After the boat started listing, the smugglers threatened to
throw some of the Cubans overboard.
"We said if you throw us in the water, we will throw you in," Bandera
said. "There were 12 of us and only two of them."
The Cubans were in the boat for nine hours, Bandera said. Some were
seasick. "People were throwing up all the time."
Then, just before they reached the island, a wave slammed the boat into
a rocky cliff and smashed the bow. The Cubans had to jump into the
choppy sea and swim for shore a half mile away.
"When we reached the island, that was the best feeling in your life
because then we knew our journey was over," Bandera said.
In Puerto Rico, Bandera and the other Cubans were processed and then
released under the United States' wet foot-dry foot policy, which
generally allows Cubans who reach U.S. soil to remain.
Bandera headed to Miami, where a social worker with a resettlement
organization gave him the choice of going to Connecticut or Arizona.
"Connecticut was too cold," Bandera said.
Bandera arrived in Phoenix at the end of February 2007. Two months
later, he walked into the rehearsal studies of Ballet Arizona and asked
for an audition, impressing the company's artistic director, Ib
Andersen, a former star with the New York City Ballet.
That May, Bandera signed a contract and became one of Ballet Arizona's
36 dancers. He finished his first season with the company this June with
an appearance in the All Balanchine performance at Symphony Hall.
Reach the reporter at daniel .gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/06/22/20080622cubans-dancer0622.html
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