Dominican migrant: We ate flesh to survive

While visiting the town of Nagua, just north of San Francisco de Macoris on the Samana peninsula, he met a boat captain identified by Santo Domingo's Noticias SIN as Francisco Soler, who told him he often made the run to Puerto Rico.

"He said I and one of my brothers could go for free, for nothing, if one of us paid," Maria Marizan said.

Some on the boat would be paying as much as $1,800, more than a year's salary for many Dominicans. Another survivor told a Dominican television station that he had mortgaged his house to make the trip.

But for Maria Marizan, the deal was too good to refuse.

The group set out about 7 a.m. on Oct. 17 from Sanchez, on the Samana peninsula's southern edge.

Aboard the vessel on that calm morning were Maria Marizan's younger brothers, Saulo, 27, and Emmanuel, 30. There were a few women; the youngest passenger was a 19-year-old man.

Decided to press on
After a day and a half, the smaller of the boat's two engines began malfunctioning and an argument broke out among the passengers about whether to give up and go back. The captain, fearful of the police, wanted to press on to the U.S. territory.

On the sixth day, a passenger died. On the seventh night, the captain disappeared — whether he swam off to find help or was thrown off by another passenger, Maria Marizan could not say.

Drinking bits of sea and rainwater, those left behind held on as long as they could, but one after another the passengers began to die — among them, Maria Marizan's brother Emmanuel.

It was just a day before they would finally be rescued that the fisherman and his four fellow survivors turned to their last resort: eating a man who had just died.

"It's like beef, almost the same," Maria Marizan said. "At the skin there is like half an inch of yellow fat, then the fibers."

On Saturday, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescued Maria Marizan, his brother Saulo, a father and son and a woman. The woman died Sunday at the same hospital where Maria Marizan is recovering.

"It was a miracle of God," Maria Marizan said. "I was just praying that one or two of us would survive to tell our story."

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