Human Trafficking Wrap-Up

Haven't read it yet, should've been on it last night when it first hit the webs, those who care have probably already seen it, but Los Angeles Magazine has had Jesse Katz* type a few thousand words on what Yasiel Puig (He plays beisbol, Philistines, & quite well.) endured getting out of Cuba.

For close to a year Puig had been trying to [...] sneak across the tropics to a mythical north, where even benchwarmers lived like kings. Two, three, four times, maybe more, he had risked everything and fled, only to be detained by the Cuban authorities or intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard—each failure making the next attempt more urgent. Finally, in June 2012, the 21-year-old outfielder left his home in Cienfuegos, on Cuba’s southern shore, and set off by car for the northern province of Matanzas, just 90 miles from Florida. He was traveling with three companions: a boxer, a pinup girl, and a Santeria priest, the latter of whom blessed their expedition with a splash of rum and a sprinkle of chicken blood.

“I don’t know if you could call it a kidnapping, because we had gone there voluntarily, but we also weren’t free to leave,” said the boxer, Yunior Despaigne, who had known Puig from Cuba’s youth sports academies. “If they didn’t receive the money, they were saying that at any moment they might give him a machetazo”—a whack with a machete—“chop off an arm, a finger, whatever, and he would never play baseball again, not for anyone.”

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*Full disclosure & name-check/dropSmall world: Mr. Katz is a former neighbor of an actual meatspace associate of this reporter.