Rosa Javier was hesitant to celebrate when police phoned to say her husband and nephew survived three weeks adrift in the Caribbean Sea, while all the other 49 voyagers are assumed dead.
“I feel some relief, but so many lives were lost,” said Javier, whose 19-year-old nephew Reynaldo Ramirez and husband Diomito Rodriguez had set off from the Dominican Republic on Nov. 13 in search of higher-paying jobs in Puerto Rico.
Dominican officials continued searching on Saturday for the missing migrants in waters just south of Haiti’s coast, where the boat was found adrift on Friday morning.
On Friday, two fishermen said they had found the survivors, naked and only able to pronounce a few words before passing out.
Rodriguez and Ramirez were being treated on Saturday for severe dehydration and burns. Authorities were waiting to talk with them once their health improved.
Javier said her nephew and husband were making their first trip abroad, hoping to escape the poverty that afflicts a fourth of the people in the country of 9.5 million.
“He told me he wanted to do something, to be someone,” she said of her husband. “I told him not to leave.”
The survivors were from San Francisco de Macoris, an agricultural center that produces the majority of the country’s rice.
“Desperation has forced people to leave,” Javier said.
The father of Reynaldo Ramirez said shortly after the rescue that he had never lost hope.
“Everybody would say that they were gone, that the sea had taken them,” Bernardo Ramirez said. “People would ask me how my heart felt, and I would tell them that my heart felt that he was still alive.”
Hundreds of migrants have died in recent years while trying to cross the treacherous Mona Passage that separates the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Just weeks ago, five Dominican migrants survived and 28 others died on another boat. The survivors said they ate the flesh of a dead migrant, and were later charged with involuntary manslaughter for helping organize an illegal trip.
The US Coast Guard estimates that the number of Dominicans attempting to come to Puerto Rico declined over past five years, to an estimated 3,000 last year from roughly 10,000.
The trend reflected a relative strengthening of the Dominican economy, but fewer visitors are coming to the tourism-dependent country this year as the world economy falters.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS