Others took a shorter, but treacherous, route. The nearest point to cuba is about 70 miles. The South Florida Straits can turn deadly very quickly. There are sharks, there are jellyfish, storms can pop up unexpectedly. Hundreds have died or gone missing. This is the story of three cubans who risked everything to leave their island for florida. In 2019, elian was living in varadero with his wife and daughter. It was the mecca of tourism for communist run cuba. For years, he had been Teaching Diving and water sports to tourists. With a strict trading embargo imposed by the usa since the 1960s, tourism brought a vital source of foreign currency to cuba, around 12 Billion Us Dollars in 2019. For 30 years, cuba was supported by its communist allies, the soviet union. But when the Socialist Bloc collapsed in the 1990s, cubans faced a daily struggle to survive. Elian had recovered from bowel cancer, but after surgery, he could not source enough colostomy bags. But complaining against the cuba