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Balseros

2002, Movie, NR, 120 mins

Balseros: Review

BALSEROS | BALSEROS (CUBAN RAFTERS)
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Originally conceived as a half-hour, Spanish public television program, this absorbing documentary follows seven "balseros" — men and women who, desperate to escape the economic shambles of post-USSR Cuba, set sail for the U.S. on makeshift rafts — through seven tumultuous years of their lives. Estimates suggest that some 50,000 Cubans attempted the 90-mile crossing in August, 1994, but 15 days after Castro opened the Cuban coasts the Clinton administration declared that enough was enough. Illegal refugees would not be admitted, and anyone caught in U.S. waters would be "rescued" and returned to the U.S. naval base in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay. Shortly after the exodus began, a crew from TV3's Trenta Minuts arrived in Havana and began filming a group of balseros as they scrambled to assemble their rafts and set off for what they hoped would be a better life in the United States. Most returned to Cuba within days: Bad weather forced Mericys Gonzalez to turn her raft around, while Guillermo Armas, Oscar Del Valle, Rafael Cano, Miriam Hernandez, Mericys's sister, Misclaida, and her common-law-husband, Juan Carlos, were all intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard. Nevertheless, TV3 reporter Carles Bosch and cameraman Josep M. Domenech continued to follow their stories, and two years later, after most had entered the U.S. legally, the filmmakers produced an update. Their subjects were now living in cities as diverse as Miami, New York and San Antonio, and in radically different circumstances. Finally reunited with his family, Guillermo entered mainstream American life. Misclaida, restless in suburban Connecticut, missed the discos and beaches of Havana. Miriam, who was forced to leave her daughter in Cuba, fought for a visa and found life in the U.S. tougher than she imagined. Oscar, meanwhile, lost all contact with the wife and child he left behind and began slipping into a life of crime in the Bronx. Five years later, Bosch and Domenech once again tracked down their seven subjects for a third and final report, and their situations are often as surprising as they are poignant. Brilliantly edited from well over 100 hours of tape, the final two-hour film recalls Michael Apted's 7 UP series, whose seven-year updates on a group of English schoolchildren raise important questions about society and the individual. Once viewers get to know the balseros as individuals, rather than by a label thrust upon them by desperate circumstances, it's interesting to see how close to — or far from — their dreams the American experience takes them. (In English and Spanish with English subtitles.) leave a comment --Ken Fox
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