Word: nativit
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...near dawn and La Nativité, a rickety 30-ft. wooden sailboat crammed with 63 Haitian refugees, was bobbing to ward the Florida coast near Fort Lauderdale. Winds of up to 30 m.p.h. lashed the sea, and waves as high as 5 ft. swept over the homemade vessel. Less than 60 yds. from land, La Nativité was suddenly swamped and its passengers spilled into the sea. Only when survivors, dazed and tearful, were spotted wandering the high way near the wealthy town of Hillsboro Beach did residents realize what had happened. Soon police were dragging...
...first, authorities were mystified about the voyage of La Nativité. Two of the survivors, all of whom were brought to Miami's Krome Ave nue North Detention Center, where 1,300 other Haitian refugees are being held, first claimed they had come via the Bahama Islands. They left Cap-Haïtien in northern Haiti on Aug. 26, they said, and spent the next 31 days sailing through the Bahamas; they subsisted by catching crabs to eat and licking the rainfall off leaves, until finally setting off Oct. 18 on the last leg of their journey...
...eaten a hot meal of pork, chicken and rice less than two hours before they drowned. Since the food could not easily have been cooked on the overcrowded boat, Wright concluded that the Haitians had eaten on a large freighter run by smugglers and then were herded onto La Nativité a few miles from shore. Said Wright: "To me that's hard and fast proof they were dumped off from a mother ship...
...pieced together. The Haitians admitted that after leaving their country, they landed in eastern Cuba. The refugees stayed there nearly a month repairing their boat, then set sail once again for the U.S., but quickly were washed up on a tiny island just off the Cuban coast. La Nativité- returned to Cuba; finally, around Oct. 23, the Cubans supplied the Haitians with food, water and cooking utensils, and then towed La Nativité out to sea - and toward Florida. The catastrophe off Hillsboro Beach occurred just three weeks after the Reagan Administration had begun a policy of intercepting boatloads...
...before the breakup of La Nativité, the Coast Guard cutter Chase made its first catch: a leaky 35-ft. sailboat filled with 57 refugees. But Coast Guard officials admit that they can do little to avert a tragedy like La Nativité. "We can't blanket the coast with cutters," said one Coast Guard officer. "Unless you happen to be in the right place at the right time, things like this are going to happen...
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