Fidel Castro, Cuba, castro death watch, havana, habana

Yep. It’s true:

In a few days, the number of Cuban migrants stopped in the Florida Straits this year will likely exceed the number of interdictions in 2006.

As of Friday afternoon, Cuban migrant interdictions by the U.S. Coast Guard stood at 2,255 — just 38 people shy of last year’s total.

The likely increase appears to reflect an anticipated uptick in the number of migrant departures from Cuba since Fidel Castro took ill and ”temporarily” ceded power to his younger brother, Raúl, in July 2006.

One expert has a reason why:

“There’s great disillusionment,” said Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. “People don’t expect Raúl to open up the economy, and there’s a pent-up demand to get out. They don’t expect change in Cuba to be easy and fast. It’s going to be long and difficult.”

Gee, ya think?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Defection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.