MIAMI — Nearly all of the dead victims recovered from a Miami-bound migrant boat that overturned Sunday in the Bahamas were women, the second time in two months that an overwhelming number of Haitian women have lost their lives in a vessel that capsized.
Of the 17 bodies recovered by Bahamian authorities so far, only one was a man. Fifteen were women and another was a young girl. Twenty-five people had been rescued as of Monday afternoon.
On Monday the Bahamian government continued with a search and recovery operation and announced the arrest of a third suspect in the migrant tragedy, which has once more underscored the dangers of such risky sea voyages in unsafe, overcrowded boats.
The migrants are believed to be Haitian nationals, but Bahamian authorities said they could not say with certainty if all of the migrants traveling onboard the boat are of Haitian descent until they finish investigating.
A similar scenario occurred in Puerto Rico in May, when a migrant vessel overturned near the American territory’s western coast. In that capsize, 11 people, all Haitian women, died. They were buried in a San Juan cemetery last month. More than three dozen others were rescued alive. Not all missing migrants were found, however, and men are reported to be among the missing.
Louis Herns Marcelin, a Haiti-born social scientist at the University of Miami who studies Haitian migration with a research team at the Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development in Haiti, said it’s difficult to know why more women appear to be dying than men without additional information about recent trends among those taking the boats.
A possible answer might be that fewer Haitian women than men know how to swim.
“Women are mostly involved in commercializing the products that result from fishing or the like,” he said. “In addition, swimming activities, even for leisure, are more common among men than they are for women.”
Over the past 12 years Haitian migrants have been mostly young men, according to migration studies conducted by Marcelin’s team.
A search and recovery operation
The 30-foot boat was leaving the Bahamas when it capsized in “rough seas,” Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said at a news conference Sunday. The search operation had not turned up any new survivors or bodies between Sunday evening and Monday morning, a Royal Bahamas Defense Force officer told the Miami Herald.
In a statement Monday, the Royal Defense Force narrowed down the number of migrants traveling onboard the boat from 60 to about 45.
The Bahamian government used drones, divers and aircraft to search the waters since the island’s police first received reports about the capsized boat at 1:17 a.m. Sunday. Authorities detected the vessel half-sunk seven miles off the island of New Providence, where Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, is located. One survivor, a woman, was still alive in an air pocket in the hull among several dead passengers. U.S. Coast Guard aircraft have also looked for survivors.
The boat left from West Bay Street, a popular migrant jumping off point in Nassau. In January, the defense force intercepted a boat in the Sand Trap area carrying 20 migrants from several countries, including Haiti, Ecuador, Colombia and Honduras.
The Bahamas has long been a popular route for undocumented migrants seeking to get to the United States, given its proximity to South Florida. Sometimes migrants decide to leave after having lived in the country for years. Other times, they travel by boat from Haiti in the first leg and then wait for weeks or months to take a boat to Florida.
The boats are able to make the voyage in a shorter period of time than a Haitian sloop, and to evade detection more easily by dropping migrants off under the cover of darkness. But the trips can be just as dangerous as the overloaded sailboats because they are usually as overcrowded.
One woman told Bahamian outlet Eyewitness News that she was looking for a Haitian man she had housed after he recently came from Haiti by sea. He had wanted to go to the United States and hadn’t come home the night of the capsize, according to the outlet.
“We just want to find out if he is alive,” she said, later telling Eyewitness News that she thought she saw him in a photograph among the tragedy’s survivors.
Haiti, Caribbean mourn the dead
On his Twitter feed, Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry gave his condolences to the families of the victims and used it as an opportunity to appeal to Haitians “for national reconciliation in order to solve the problems that are driving away, far from our soil, our brothers, our sisters, our children.”
“This new tragedy saddens the whole nation,” he said.
The Caribbean Community regional bloc known as CARICOM also said it was “extremely saddened” in a statement and extended its condolences to those who had lost loved ones during Sunday’s tragedy.
“This latest disaster brings to the fore once again the desperate situation in Haiti and the reprehensible nature of the actions of those who are trying to take advantage of people trying to escape,” said the organization, referring to the human smugglers that take people on the illegal ocean voyages.
Guerline Jozef, co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, said that the root causes of Haiti’s deadly sea migrations must be addressed as the Caribbean country faces economic, political and social instability.
“We just buried 11 women not too long ago,” said Jozef, a Haitian activist. “People are dying in the Darien Gap, dying in Mexico, dying in Puerto Rico, dying in the Bahamas.”
Jozef told the Miami Herald her organization receives calls daily from people looking for loved ones who went missing as they attempt to reach the United States, whether by land or sea.
“We don’t know how many Haitian lives have been lost trying to flee,” she said.
The advocate has been traveling to Puerto Rico as the island sees record numbers of Haitian migrants reach its shores. She fears that relatives might not come claim or identify the bodies because they or their deceased loved ones are undocumented.
“We want to share condolences to each and every family member and let them know that we are here for them,” she said.
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