Word: puerto
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...open sea 20 miles off the Dominican Republic gestured frantically for help. The plane was unable to put down on water, however, and its occupants could only look on in helpless horror at the scene unfolding beneath them. The swimmers, passengers on a sinking people-smuggling ship bound for Puerto Rico, were under siege by dozens of sharks. "In one instance we saw a shark literally throw someone in the air and then attack the person," recalled one of the witnesses, Eugenio Cabral, the Dominican Republic's director of civil defense. "It was just unbearable not being able...
...victims of the carnage were among some 150 Dominicans, mostly young women, who had paid up to $600 each for illegal passage to Puerto Rico aboard a 50-ft. wooden fishing boat. The group had set out at 2 a.m. Tuesday from Death's Head Beach in the town of Nagua, about 110 miles north of the capital of Santo Domingo. The ship was only four miles out to sea when, according to some survivors, its two outboard motors exploded. Since most of those aboard were unable to swim, many probably drowned within a few minutes of the accident...
Besides Rubio, at least 20 other passengers were known to have reached shore. Still others may have made it to safety unnoticed. But Cabral estimates that as many as 70 of the shipwreck victims drowned or were eaten by sharks. Given the heavy volume of illegal Dominican immigration to Puerto Rico, a tragedy was almost inevitable. Indeed, hundreds of inhabitants of the impoverished Caribbean nation have perished on the dangerous 90-mile journey across the Mona Passage between the two islands. Most of the dead are victims of fierce tropical storms or unscrupulous sea captains who take their passengers' money...
...effort to stem that influx, the U.S. Border Patrol last week opened its first station outside the continental U.S. The office, located at the old Ramey Air Force Base on the west coast of Puerto Rico, will be staffed by 15 officers and equipped with two Boston Whalers and a twin-engine plane. Depending on future patterns of illegal immigration traffic, the Border Patrol may open as many as three other stations on the Puerto Rican coast...
Organized smuggling rings control much of the illegal-alien traffic into Puerto Rico. They do an especially brisk business with Dominicans, many of whom sell all their belongings for a chance to get to U.S. soil. While some Dominicans land in Puerto Rico, others travel to the continental U.S., ( especially New York City. The going rate for a no-frills, no-guarantees trip across the Mona Passage is as high as $1,000. More deluxe trips, complete with falsified documents and a truck ride to San Juan, can cost thousands of dollars...