"My daughter, the obsession of a mother."

By Icess Fernandez Caller-Times

A special instinct drove Magali Araugo Cruz to the ocean, where she spent two months writhing with seasickness pains, sustained by the occa-sional raw fish, in the company of five bick-ering men.

"My goal was to see my daughter," she said from her hospital bed Friday in Cor-pus Christi. "My daughter, the obsession of a mother."

She hadn't seen 19-year-old Ilien in the four years since her daughter escaped Cuba. Only the 90 miles between the island and Miami separated them. Yet Cruz chose to escape with men whose destination was Cozumel, Mexico, about 600 miles away. The men planned to work in Cozumel, then work their way north to the United States because they thought they would encounter fewer authorities along the way. That indi-rect route was the only one available to her.

The route became significantly more indirect when Hurricane Charley drove their 30-foot boat off course and left them adrift, out of fuel. They beached near Port Aransas late Wednesday.

"At times when I'm sitting here, I start to get dizzy again and I think I'm still in the ocean," she said as she sat in her bed at Christus Spohn Hos1pital Memorial.

Cruz, 55, hardly knew the men she traveled with, except for one, Beidel Perez, 27. He was a friend of one of her sons and the person who invited her along.

"The decision to leave? I had always decided to leave," she said. "Three times I decided to leave. But this was the first time I actually left."

All six Cubans are originally from Cam-agueey, a province in the middle of the island. Perez approached her at the begin-ning of June to be part of the journey.

"I told my sons that my daughter need-ed me and I hadn't seen her since she left," she said.

Cruz then started to sign the paper-work that would guarantee all her worldly possessions, including her house and whatever money she had left over, to one of her daughters-in-law.

Cruz said they left from Manzanillo at 6:30 p.m. June 25. The small fishing ves-sel, which they purchased for about 1,400 U.S. dollars, was barely a boat.

'Just a motor'

"The first boat was just a motor," she said. "We used towels and things to fix the boat."

The boat broke down the first time a couple of miles from the island. The group stopped at a nearby island. There, Cruz said, she ate iguana for the first time. While the men were fixing the boat, Cruz was sick, she said.

"We were all desperate. Food and water ran out until we reached the Cay-mans," Cruz said.

That was five days into the journey. There, the Cubans ate food and bought provisions and another boat for $5,000. One of the Cubans' relatives wired the money. Everyone called their families in the United States, she said. In addi-tion, they purchased three 55-gallon drums of gasoline for their new boat.

As they sailed from the Caymans, they hit Tropical Storm Bonnie and Hurri-cane Charley. Because of the storms, Cruz said, the gasoline went quickly.

"It was supposed to make it through to Mexico but it only lasted 2$ days," she said. "And that's when the problems started. We had to make sails out of tow-els. Nine towels we used."

Until then, they had treated each other as family. The relationships deteriorat-ed under the strain. The men argued. She kept her mouth shut and tried to sleep.

"We barely talked," she said. "We just fought. I was the only woman and some-times they didn't like what I would say so they would tell me to shut up."

The group survived by fishing, drink-ing salt or rain water, and sometimes, Cruz said, they had to drink their own urine.

"I would tell them, guys, don't do that, that's nasty. And they would say, 'What do you want us to drink? There is noth-ing but salt water.' I wouldn't drink the urine. I just couldn't."

The storms in the Gulf steered them off course. The nights of the hurricane were dark, she said. But she kept faith.

'I prayed a lot'

"The seas have a lot of surprises," she said. "I respect it. The sea is awful at night. I never thought about dying. I prayed a lot. I brought the Bible I was baptized with three years ago."

The ordeal left her 60 pounds lighter, dropping from 180 to 120.

"I looked at myself for the first time in the mirror, and I yelled. I've never looked like this before."

There were other blows to her vani-ty: "I had beautiful hair but the sea ruined it," the blonde said.

Cruz was released from the hospital Friday, underwent background checks by immigration authorities, saw an immigration judge and is staying with a local Cuban-American family until rela-tives from Miami come to take her there.

'Ready to help'

"Where there is a Cuban in distress there will be a Cuban ready to help," said Aracelis Tamayo, the Corpus Christi resident who took in Cruz. "That's the way I feel and that's the way it is. It's a gift for me to do these things for her."

Two of the men who sailed with Cruz are in Dallas with family and the other three were sent by bus to Miami, where they have relatives waiting.

All six will have court hearings to review their requests for asylum, which likely will be followed by applications for permanent residency.

U.S. policy toward Cuban refugees is to grant asylum if they make it to U.S. soil, but to send them home if they are retrieved at sea.

Cruz worked as a custodian in Cuba. Here, she expects to take care of her 73-year-old sister in Miami.

Her seafaring days are done.

"I will never step on a boat, or even touch one."

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