A boatload of starving migrants from the Dominican Republic resorted to drinking breast milk and eating human flesh on an ill-fated crossing to Puerto Rico that left at least 40 people dead, according to some survivors and rescuers.
Survivors recuperating in hospitals said yesterday that they each paid $450 (U.S.) to a sea captain in hopes of making the rough-water voyage to the U.S. territory, which they hoped would be a first step to a better life.
But the motor of the rickety nine-metre wooden boat, which was crammed with more than 80 people, cut out after two days. Then the captain vanished, food supplies ran out and survivors were forced to jettison the bodies of those who had died of hunger and dehydration. Two weeks after setting out for Puerto Rico, the remaining passengers drifted back nearly to where they had started.
"People were going crazy. They were begging for water," fisherman Pedro Paulino, who rescued survivors Tuesday afternoon, told The Globe and Mail in a telephone interview. "They were severely dehydrated and some were half-dying. They were in very bad condition."
Relatives of a Dominican who died trying to reach Puerto Rico grieve in Nagua Wednesday. (Walter Astrada/AP)
The two islands are 100 kilometres apart, but the voyagers left from a point west of the Dominican Republic's eastern tip. A successful trip would have taken them more than twice that distance.
Faustina Santana Candelario, a 27-year-old survivor, told journalists from her hospital bed that two lactating women had shared their breast milk with others. Another survivor, Juana Santos, told Dominican Canal 11 television that she drank another woman's breast milk. "She put the milk on my lips, which were very dry, and my thirst was relieved," she said.
Veronica de La Cruz told Associated Press that she offered breast milk to more than eight people and that another woman died after similarly helping others. "People started biting her everywhere to get at her nipples," said Ms. de La Cruz, 19, who left her baby at home. "She had bruises everywhere when she died."
Another account emerged of angry men throwing a woman into the shark-infested waters of the Mona Passage, because she wouldn't share her breast milk. Still another story told of people being driven so mad by hunger that they threw themselves overboard.
Ms. Santos described scenes of cannibalism. Other survivors denied it. Ramon Ballano, 40, told Associated Press that some migrants wanted to eat the ears of the dead. Others said no. "If we're going to die, we'll all die together," he said.
Mr. Paulino said that of the original 80 passengers, only 23 men and teenaged boys and nine female passengers remained on board. "Some had jumped overboard," he said. "Others had been thrown overboard after they died."
Huchi Lora, a journalist with Canal 11, said he found bloodstains on the boat.
"There was a group of people on board who tried to control the food, and they quarrelled with another group and there was a fight," he said. "Most of the survivors didn't want to talk about the cannibalism."
The survivors had gotten close to Puerto Rico when their motor gave out. Their food stocks — chocolate, peanuts and sardines — were exhausted by the third day, and then their captain jumped onto another passing migrant ship, promising to return. But he never came, and after Tuesday's rescue, the survivors found themselves deposited right back in their own country.
The Dominican Republic has been mired in an economic crisis for more than a year, dealing with steep inflation, rising oil costs and bank failures, factors that have contributed to a burgeoning exodus. The U.S. Coast Guard says it has intercepted more than three times as many Dominicans at sea this year as last: 5,500 people in 134 boats during the past 10 months.
Large numbers of footprints on remote Puerto Rican beaches indicate that as many as 30 per cent of migrants do complete their journeys, according to Lieutenant Eric Willis of the U.S. Coast Guard.
"It's surprising and horrifying, but it's not something unheard of," Lt. Willis said of the latest case. "We at the Greater Antilles section have heard of most of this before: the survival on breast milk, the resorting to cannibalism. They have occurred in these waters before."
Dominican migrants pay smugglers as much as $1,000 (U.S.) a head in order to board the boats, typically shoddily constructed wooden craft known as yolas. If they make it to Puerto Rico, a commonwealth whose four million people are U.S. citizens.
There is a rising demand for the trip. But Patricia Hawkins, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department in Santo Domingo, called the smugglers murderers, saying they are placing Dominicans at severe risk.
"When people die because there's no food, there's no water, there's no life preservers ..... [and] you've got a 40-foot boat with 80 people on it and it's got a 40-horsepower engine, that's murder," she said yesterday.
Mr. Lora, the television journalist, said organized crime rings run the crossings.
"These mafia came to the hospitals and private clinics where the survivors were and gave them signals not to give interviews to journalists," he said.
