Posted on Mon, Jun. 09, 2008
BY ALFONSO CHARDY AND CASEY WOODS
achardy@MiamiHerald.com
Elvis Manuel disappeared after he left Cuba with his mother and several
others on a boat bound for the United States.
MIAMI HERALD FILE
The sun was about to set when a young man from Miami showed up in Havana
and picked up a group of five people that included Cuban reggaeton
singer Elvis Manuel.
Then the visitor drove the five about 100 miles west to a marshy beach
in Pinar del Rio province and told them that a boat was coming later
that night to take them to Miami.
That man, according to two other people who were on the boat: one of the
singer's Miami-based producers, Lester Delgado.
The account from Manuel's mother, Irioska María Nodarse, and his musical
partner Alejandro ''DJ Jerry'' Rodríguez for the first time implicates
his Miami associates as having direct involvement in the tragic April 7
voyage that left the singer lost at sea and presumed dead.
Their account suggests the voyage was a migrant smuggling operation and
that Delgado, who they had met in Havana three months earlier, was aware
of the trip before it began.
Delgado came to Cuba ''a few days before'' the ill-fated voyage, Nodarse
said. Delgado and business partner Eric Reyes ''organized'' the trip,
she said, but would not go into specific details.
Reyes and Delgado ''said they were going to pay double for us,''
Rodríguez said of the boat trip. ``That it was paid for.''
Previously, Delgado and Reyes had told The Miami Herald they learned
Elvis Manuel was en route to Miami when relatives called from Cuba
asking about his whereabouts.
Reyes, 32, angrily denied the accusations last week, calling Rodriguez
and Nodarse ``liars.''
''They have Cuban security agents telling them what to say, and you
can't believe any of it,'' Reyes said. ``If I could I would file a
defamation lawsuit against [Nodarse] because she is blaming us when she
is the guilty one. She is the one who got on the boat.''
Delgado did not return phone calls and text messages seeking comment.
Reyes said he believes Manuel's disappearance is fake. ''He never left
Cuba,'' Reyes said. ``He's hiding out somewhere.''
Reyes also said he had been ''tricked and robbed'' by Nodarse because
Manuel had made deals with other music producers in Europe that were not
disclosed. ''We are victims here,'' he said.
Nodarse and Rodríguez, 19, provided details of the voyage in telephone
interviews with The Miami Herald from their homes in Havana. They were
traveling with the singer and 16 others on the ill-fated boat and
survived its capsizing. They were rescued by the Coast Guard and
returned to Cuba under the wet-foot/dry-foot policy.
Two smuggling suspects, apparently the boat's crew members, are being
held in Krome detention center and are under investigation by U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Neither has been identified,
charged or publicly linked to Delgado.
''We have an ongoing investigation into the matter,'' said Barbara
Gonzalez, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman in Miami.
``As a matter of ICE policy, we're precluded from commenting on ongoing
investigations.''
The boat that carried the singer -- whose full name is Elvis Manuel
Martínez Nodarse -- capsized when a storm swept through the Florida
Straits between late April 7 and early April 8.
Nodarse and 13 other Cuban migrants including Rodríguez were rescued by
the Coast Guard, but Elvis Manuel and four others disappeared.
Rodríguez said that when Delgado arrived in Havana before the trip,
Delgado personally assured him and Elvis Manuel that payment for the
voyage had been arranged and that a boat was coming to pick up the group
on the night of April 7.
Then, Rodríguez said, Delgado picked up the group on a Monday evening at
Elvis Manuel's home in the Havana area municipality of Arroyo Naranjo
and drove them to the rendezvous point.
Rodríguez said the group included himself, Elvis Manuel, Elvis Manuel's
mother, Carlos Rojas -- another Elvis Manuel musical partner known as DJ
Carlitos -- and Elvis Manuel's godfather, who Nodarse identified only by
his first name, Augusto.
Rojas could not be reached for comment.
Rodríguez said Delgado dropped off the group, saying a boat would soon
come soon.
Near midnight, Rodríguez said, a boat appeared and anchored offshore. It
was then that Elvis Manuel's group realized they would be joined by
other migrant groups.
''When the boat arrived other groups of people converged on it from many
places,'' Rodríguez recalled.
Rodríguez said the tragedy began to unfold four months earlier when
Delgado and Reyes showed up at one of Elvis Manuel's Havana concerts.
''We met there and started talking,'' Rodríguez said, adding that the
two producers traveled frequently between Miami and Havana in the months
before the boat showed up to pick up the group.
Originally, Rodríguez said, Delgado proposed a contract in Mexico but
eventually Miami emerged as destination.
Rodríguez said he, Elvis Manuel, Nodarse and Rojas were unhappy about
the change but went along because of a lot of money was promised.
''They spoke of $40,000 for the group to start with,'' Rodríguez said.
Nodarse confirmed his account. ''They offered us work and money,'' she
said. ``Everything [Rodríguez] says is true.''
Rodríguez added that sometime in March, Delgado and Reyes announced the
change to Miami in telephone calls from Miami.
Rodríguez said everyone in the group was reluctant to undertake a boat
trip to Miami, but were mollified by the financial promises and deterred
by logistical problems with the Mexico deal cited by the Miami producers.
''They created an atmosphere of desperation,'' Rodríguez said. ``They
told us a lot of lies and Elvis was anxious to get going.''
Nodarse said she and Elvis Manuel signed a contract, but insisted that
the contract was not valid because it was neither dated nor numbered.
Richard Wolfe, a Miami entertainment industry lawyer, said the contract
may be valid or invalid depending on language in it. The Miami Herald
was unable to get a copy of the contract.
In telephone interviews in May, Nodarse said she would not authorize
Reyes and Delgado to issue a new CD with Elvis Manuel songs. Reyes said
his company, Millenium Records, does not plan to issue any CDs or videos
of Elvis Manuel.
''We don't want to profit off of Elvis Manuel,'' Reyes said. ``We wanted
to help him.''
But another Cuban exile reggaeton producer in Las Vegas, Javier
''Voltaje'' Fernández recently issued a promotional video with footage
of Elvis Manuel singing taken in Cuba a few months ago. A spokesman for
Fernández said the video is part of a campaign to promote a forthcoming
concert tour by Voltaje to raise money to help the Cuban singer's family
in Cuba.
Rodríguez said arrangements for the trip were flawed from the start. For
example, he said, the 25-foot boat was smaller than initially promised
with more passengers than they expected. ''We expected a bigger boat
because they had talked about one 36 to 38 feet in length,'' Rodríguez said.
Later, he added, boat passengers realized the crewmen were inexperienced.
''We traveled for about five or six hours and understood that they were
sort of lost,'' Rodríguez said. ``They didn't even have a compass. . . .
It was a terrible mistake.''
The group ran into the storm and the heavy waves began filling the boat
with water.
Nodarse said she thought the boat's engines broke down, but Rodríguez
said he believes the crewmen turned off the engines to stop the boat in
hopes of steadying it.
''They were bailing out water and everyone was desperate,'' Rodríguez
recalled. ``When they turned on the engines, someone lifted a lid
somewhere on the boat and more water came in. That's when it flipped over.''
Everyone aboard was thrown into the water.
Nodarse said she lost sight of her son when a large shadow came between
him and her.
Rodríguez said the shadow was a wave: ``We never saw Elvis Manuel after
that.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/563044.html
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