Jun 10, 2008, 03:15 AM
Quote:The sun was about to set when a young man from Miami showed up in Havana and picked up a group of five people that included Cuban reggaeton singer Elvis Manuel.
Then the visitor drove the five about 100 miles west to a marshy beach in Pinar del Rio province and told them that a boat was coming later that night to take them to Miami.
That man, according to two other people who were on the boat: one of the singer's Miami-based producers, Lester Delgado.
The account from Manuel's mother, Irioska María Nodarse, and his musical partner Alejandro ''DJ Jerry'' Rodríguez for the first time implicates his Miami associates as having direct involvement in the tragic April 7 voyage that left the singer lost at sea and presumed dead.
Their account suggests the voyage was a migrant smuggling operation and that Delgado, who they had met in Havana three months earlier, was aware of the trip before it began.
Delgado came to Cuba ''a few days before'' the ill-fated voyage, Nodarse said. Delgado and business partner Eric Reyes ''organized'' the trip, she said, but would not go into specific details.
Reyes and Delgado ''said they were going to pay double for us,'' Rodríguez said of the boat trip. ``That it was paid for.''
Previously, Delgado and Reyes had told The Miami Herald they learned Elvis Manuel was en route to Miami when relatives called from Cuba asking about his whereabouts.
Reyes, 32, angrily denied the accusations last week, calling Rodriguez and Nodarse ``liars.''
''They have Cuban security agents telling them what to say, and you can't believe any of it,'' Reyes said. ``If I could I would file a defamation lawsuit against [Nodarse] because she is blaming us when she is the guilty one. She is the one who got on the boat.''
Delgado did not return phone calls and text messages seeking comment.
Reyes said he believes Manuel's disappearance is fake. ''He never left Cuba,'' Reyes said. ``He's hiding out somewhere.''
Reyes also said he had been ''tricked and robbed'' by Nodarse because Manuel had made deals with other music producers in Europe that were not disclosed. ''We are victims here,'' he said.
Nodarse and Rodríguez, 19, provided details of the voyage in telephone interviews with The Miami Herald from their homes in Havana. They were traveling with the singer and 16 others on the ill-fated boat and survived its capsizing. They were rescued by the Coast Guard and returned to Cuba under the wet-foot/dry-foot policy.
Two smuggling suspects, apparently the boat's crew members, are being held in Krome detention center and are under investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Neither has been identified, charged or publicly linked to Delgado.
''We have an ongoing investigation into the matter,'' said Barbara Gonzalez, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman in Miami. ``As a matter of ICE policy, we're precluded from commenting on ongoing investigations.''
The boat that carried the singer -- whose full name is Elvis Manuel Martínez Nodarse -- capsized when a storm swept through the Florida Straits between late April 7 and early April 8.
Nodarse and 13 other Cuban migrants including Rodríguez were rescued by the Coast Guard, but Elvis Manuel and four others disappeared.
Rodríguez said that when Delgado arrived in Havana before the trip, Delgado personally assured him and Elvis Manuel that payment for the voyage had been arranged and that a boat was coming to pick up the group on the night of April 7.
Then, Rodríguez said, Delgado picked up the group on a Monday evening at Elvis Manuel's home in the Havana area municipality of Arroyo Naranjo and drove them to the rendezvous point.
Rodríguez said the group included himself, Elvis Manuel, Elvis Manuel's mother, Carlos Rojas -- another Elvis Manuel musical partner known as DJ Carlitos -- and Elvis Manuel's godfather, who Nodarse identified only by his first name, Augusto.
Rojas could not be reached for comment.
Rodríguez said Delgado dropped off the group, saying a boat would soon come soon.
Near midnight, Rodríguez said, a boat appeared and anchored offshore. It was then that Elvis Manuel's group realized they would be joined by other migrant groups.
''When the boat arrived other groups of people converged on it from many places,'' Rodríguez recalled.
Rodríguez said the tragedy began to unfold four months earlier when Delgado and Reyes showed up at one of Elvis Manuel's Havana concerts.
''We met there and started talking,'' Rodríguez said, adding that the two producers traveled frequently between Miami and Havana in the months before the boat showed up to pick up the group.
Originally, Rodríguez said, Delgado proposed a contract in Mexico but eventually Miami emerged as destination.
Rodríguez said he, Elvis Manuel, Nodarse and Rojas were unhappy about the change but went along because of a lot of money was promised.
''They spoke of $40,000 for the group to start with,'' Rodríguez said.
Nodarse confirmed his account. ''They offered us work and money,'' she said. ``Everything [Rodríguez] says is true.''
Rodríguez added that sometime in March, Delgado and Reyes announced the change to Miami in telephone calls from Miami.
Rodríguez said everyone in the group was reluctant to undertake a boat trip to Miami, but were mollified by the financial promises and deterred by logistical problems with the Mexico deal cited by the Miami producers.
''They created an atmosphere of desperation,'' Rodríguez said. ``They told us a lot of lies and Elvis was anxious to get going.''
Nodarse said she and Elvis Manuel signed a contract, but insisted that the contract was not valid because it was neither dated nor numbered.
Richard Wolfe, a Miami entertainment industry lawyer, said the contract may be valid or invalid depending on language in it. The Miami Herald was unable to get a copy of the contract.
In telephone interviews in May, Nodarse said she would not authorize Reyes and Delgado to issue a new CD with Elvis Manuel songs. Reyes said his company, Millenium Records, does not plan to issue any CDs or videos of Elvis Manuel.
''We don't want to profit off of Elvis Manuel,'' Reyes said. ``We wanted to help him.''
But another Cuban exile reggaeton producer in Las Vegas, Javier ''Voltaje'' Fernández recently issued a promotional video with footage of Elvis Manuel singing taken in Cuba a few months ago. A spokesman for Fernández said the video is part of a campaign to promote a forthcoming concert tour by Voltaje to raise money to help the Cuban singer's family in Cuba.
Rodríguez said arrangements for the trip were flawed from the start. For example, he said, the 25-foot boat was smaller than initially promised with more passengers than they expected. ''We expected a bigger boat because they had talked about one 36 to 38 feet in length,'' Rodríguez said.
Later, he added, boat passengers realized the crewmen were inexperienced.
''We traveled for about five or six hours and understood that they were sort of lost,'' Rodríguez said. ``They didn't even have a compass. . . . It was a terrible mistake.''
The group ran into the storm and the heavy waves began filling the boat with water.
Nodarse said she thought the boat's engines broke down, but Rodríguez said he believes the crewmen turned off the engines to stop the boat in hopes of steadying it.
''They were bailing out water and everyone was desperate,'' Rodríguez recalled. ``When they turned on the engines, someone lifted a lid somewhere on the boat and more water came in. That's when it flipped over.''
Everyone aboard was thrown into the water.
Nodarse said she lost sight of her son when a large shadow came between him and her.
Rodríguez said the shadow was a wave: ``We never saw Elvis Manuel after that.''