"We Want Out"

Cubans chafe at camp life

"!Libertad! !Libertad! !Libertad! shouted the crowd of 350 Cuban refugees as they rushed through the streets of Arkansas' Fort Chaffee one evening last week. It was 10:30 p.m. --curfew time --and the friends and relatives visiting the refugees at the base's Red Cross building had just been asked to leave for the night. Suddenly, the anger and frustration that had long been building within the refugee center erupted. The refugees knocked over barriers and streamed out of an open rear gate that had been left unguarded by the military police.

As the refugees ran through the streets of the nearby community of Jenny Lind, excited townspeople took to the streets with guns. Warning shots were fired into the air. Through the night, local police scoured the countryside for the refugees. They found many of them, frightened and bewildered, holding hands as they walked timidly along country roads. By morning, authorities believed they had rounded up all the escapees and returned them to the base. Though no injuries were reported, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton dispatched 100 National Guardsmen to strengthen the camp's security detail.

The breakout followed by only two days a more violent melee at the refugee processing center at Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., where 200 Cubans jumped the fence. Some of them threw rocks and bricks at military police. The police eventually corralled them and isolated 68 in a more secure compound.

After braving the 110-mile boat journey from Mariel in Castro's Cuba, the refugees arrived at Key West, Fla., with visions of freedom and a better life. But they were herded onto planes and flown to one of four refugee camps, where they began the dreary game of waiting as center officials slowly processed them. Of the 7,500 refugees now living at Eglin, 5,000 have been there since the center opened on May 3. Arkansas' Fort Chaffee remains filled with 18,800, Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, Pa., holds 15,000, and the just opened Camp McCoy near Sparta, Wis., has 172. "The boredom is overwhelming," complained Luis Martinez, an engineering technician who has been at Eglin for more than two weeks. "All you can do is worry, worry, worry."

The Cubans are imprisoned in a bureaucratic snarl. The physical exams and interviews with immigration officials move quickly enough; it is the search for the U.S. residents required to sponsor the refugees that takes time. Those with relatives already in the U.S. stand the best chance of speedy discharge, but finding those relatives is not always easy. The refugees come with telephone numbers but no area codes, addresses a decade or more old, or simply a name and little more --"Juan Diaz, New Jersey."

For those without relatives, the search for sponsors takes longer. "There just aren't enough people willing to take them in," says Marisol Alegret, a worker with the International Rescue Committee, one of half a dozen placement agencies helping out. And those who do volunteer as sponsors must be carefully screened. "We don't want to dump these refugees," says Jan Pittman, regional director of the U.S. Catholic Conference, who regularly turns down requests from those looking only for cheap Cuban help. "This isn't like going to the humane society for a dog."

So far, 42,000 of the 89,000 refugees who have landed on U.S. soil in the past two months have been resettled, but the pace promises to wind on just as slowly as in the past. "We're going to do something about the delays," said an Army colonel through a bullhorn last week at Eglin. "We ask your patience just a little while longer." The refugees feel they know otherwise. A sign on one of their tents sums up their anxiety. QUEREMOS SALIDA, reads the scrawled message. WE WANT OUT.

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