The Cuban coast guard rescued the others -- including five children -- who were tossed into the waves Saturday off the coast of Mariel, just outside Havana, the government's Radio Reloj reported Monday. The drowning victim was identified as a 45-year-old man.
The Cuban government identified two of the men on board as smugglers who live in the United States. The two, identified as Joel Dorta Garcia and David Garcia Capote, were arrested and were to be turned over to U.S. authorities eventually, Radio Reloj said.
The smugglers had charged their passengers up to $8,000 each to be taken to Florida, the report said.
The island's communist government used the accident to focus on illegal alien smuggling. Havana has criticized Washington in the past for not doing enough to control the practice.
The Cuban Interior Ministry issued a statement Monday criticizing ``a growing number of adventurers'' undertaking alien smuggling and ``running all kinds of risks for the people they transport.''
The Interior Ministry, which oversees all domestic security including immigration, said it was awaiting a response from the American government.
The capsize of the 32-foot boat seven miles off the coast occurred the same day that nearly 1,000 people gathered on the other side of the Straits of Florida to protest the U.S. Coast Guard's handling last week of six Cubans who tried to swim from a rowboat to reach American soil.
Miami television reports on June 29 showed the U.S. Coast Guard blasting the men with a water hose as they stood in their 14-foot boat about 50 yards from shore. Officers then swarmed them as they jumped overboard and swam toward land.
Two made it to shore, and four were pulled from the water and later transferred from a Coast Guard ship to an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center.
The men were freed from custody and allowed to remain in the United States following protests by Miami's Cuban-American community against U.S. policies that require Cubans picked up at sea to be returned home.
Under immigration accords reached between the two countries five years ago, Cubans who reach American soil may apply for political asylum while those intercepted at sea -- even a short distance from land -- are almost always returned to Cuba.
When the Cuban government briefly lowered its coastal borders in the summer of 1994, more than 30,000 rafters set out across the straits. Many were picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard and sent to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo in eastern Cuba.
Eventually, most of those held at Guantanamo were granted legal residency by the U.S. government.
Earlier this year, Cuba denied persistent rumors from Miami that it had plans to once again allow anyone who wanted to emigrate to do so.
As of Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard had picked up 877 Cubans at sea so far this year, compared to 1,047 during all of 1998.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press