More Cubans Try Dangerous Trip to US Across Florida Straits 

ORLANDO NODARSE, CUBA - Zuleydis Elledias has gotten up each morning for the past two months hoping for a phone call, a message — any news on the fate of her husband and nephew, who disappeared at sea after the boat they were in capsized as they tried to reach Florida. 

Another half dozen families in the small town of Orlando Nodarse, 35 miles (55 kilometers) west of Havana and near the port of Mariel, are living with the same uncertainty.  “Due to the pandemic my husband lost his job. Many places closed and he had been home for more than a year. Every time he went to his workplace, they told him to wait. And that made him desperate because we have a 2-year-old son,” Elledias, a 38-year-old homemaker, told The Associated Press through tears.  Cuba is seeing a surge in unauthorized migration to the United States, fueled by an economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic, increased U.S. sanctions and cutbacks in aid from its also-crisis-wracked Venezuelan ally. That has led to shortages in many goods and a series of protests that shook the island on July 11.