{"id":29613,"date":"2020-08-11T09:16:08","date_gmt":"2020-08-11T14:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/?p=29613"},"modified":"2020-08-11T09:16:08","modified_gmt":"2020-08-11T14:16:08","slug":"cubans-looking-freedom-increasingly-land-panama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panamaadvisoryinternationalgroup.com\/blog\/cubans-looking-freedom-increasingly-land-panama\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubans looking for freedom increasingly land in Panama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For Yordany Castillo Leyva, the decision to leave Cuba was a question of life and death.<\/p>\n

As a former forensic medical examiner, Castillo had seen his share of dead bodies. Two years into his job at a Havana hospital, he said he noticed something strange about some of the victims brought to his autopsy table.<\/p>\n

Authorities told him a 15-year-old girl and a 21-year-old man had died in a car accident. But he said he found marks consistent with strangulation and blows to the abdomen. A few weeks later, he had another body with the same story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized that they wanted to use me and make me an accomplice to murder,\u201d he said. \u201cI never accepted that condition at any moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

After sounding an alarm, Castillo said he lost his job, couldn\u2019t find work and received threats from the police.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy life became chaos,\u201d he said. In October 2018, he decided to flee.<\/p>\n

Castillo and his family are part of an exodus of Cubans disillusioned by the island\u2019s communist revolution of 1959, which promised equality and economic security but left a complicated legacy of unfulfilled promises, a crumbling economy and a divisive dictatorship.<\/p>\n

A series of immigration policy changes by the U.S. and Central American countries has created roadblocks forcing Cuban migrants to change their exodus routes. No longer can they expect automatic asylum if they reach the coast of Florida in makeshift rafts. Increasingly, Cuban migrants travel through Panama, hoping to reach the U.S. While some reach the U.S.-Mexico border, others give up and stay in countries that were not their original destinations.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Cubans enter from) Guyana, they enter from Ecuador, they enter from Brazil, and continue on the route, and want to continue crossing borders,\u201d said Hussein Pitty, director of the Oficina Nacional para la Atenci\u00f3n de Refugiados, Panama\u2019s national office for refugees.\u201cAnd what happened some years back? Guatemala and Nicaragua created barriers. Cubans were stuck in Panama and Costa Rica because of those obstacles.\u201d<\/p>\n

For some Cuban migrants, Panama has become a haven where they seek political freedom and economic stability. For others, it remains a rest stop.<\/p>\n

Panama\u2019s National Migration Service reports that of the 106,622 Cubans who entered Panama in 2019, it had no exit records for 9,124 of them, which indicates they have either overstayed their visas or continued to travel north without documents. The figure is about 10 times greater than the previous year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Left:<\/strong>\u00a0Marcelys Jime?nez worked as a veterinarian before she left Cuba with her husband and two young sons. (Photo by Marcus Xavier Chormicle\/Cronkite Borderlands Project)\u00a0Right:<\/strong>\u00a0Yordany Castillo Leyva worked as a forensic medical examiner in Cuba before fleeing with his family. (Photo by Marcus Xavier Chormicle\/Cronkite Borderlands Project)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Castillo embarked on the journey with his wife, Marcelys Jim\u00e9nez, and their two sons, Angel and Anyelo, ages 11 and 5. They flew to Guyana, a South American country with no visa requirements for Cubans. From there, they moved to Peru, where they lived for a year. The family left Peru after authorities denied their application for refugee status. They made their way north.<\/p>\n

The family\u2019s trip culminated in a trek across the Dari\u00e9n Gap, a 60-mile stretch of jungle that forms a natural border between Colombia and Panama. Castillo said they were assaulted three times and robbed of everything they had, forced to eat worms to survive.<\/p>\n

By Jim\u00e9nez\u2019s count, the family watched 27 people die during their 11-day journey. One of them was an infant named Marcos, who drowned in the river, Castillo recalled, choking on the name.<\/p>\n

\u201cDay and night we walked, listening to the screams of different people who were left behind because they couldn\u2019t go any longer,\u201d Jim\u00e9nez said.<\/p>\n

The events they experienced are common among migrants who cross the Dari\u00e9n Gap, said Carlos Ayala, a psychologist at the nonprofit organization Fe y Alegr\u00eda in Panama City. Migrants report seeing countless bodies and being raped, robbed or assaulted in the jungle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey pass through a series of physically demanding situations,\u201d Ayala said. \u201cThey don\u2019t all make it here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Castillo family joined a group of about 150 people led through the jungle by local \u201ccoyotes\u201d who charged them $50 each day. But by day three, Anyelo, their younger son, became ill, and the family had to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n

They had packed enough food and medicine for eight days, but armed bandits robbed them three times, Jim\u00e9nez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we reached a certain point, there were already people there waiting for us,\u201d she said. \u201cThese people have no scruples about anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

On their last day in the jungle, having gone six days without eating, Jim\u00e9nez could go no farther. She and the children stayed, and she sent Castillo out to look for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur strength had run out,\u201d Jim\u00e9nez said.<\/p>\n

Castillo encountered a native Panamanian with a boat near Bajo Chiquito, one of the first entry points for migrants emerging from the jungle.<\/p>\n

From Bajo Chiquito, migrants make their way to a migrant camp at La Pe\u00f1ita manned by Panama\u2019s U.S.-trained border patrol agency, SENAFRONT. The country has developed a system known as \u201ccontrolled flow\u201d to monitor migrants and move them along to the next country to the north, Costa Rica.<\/p>\n

At migrant camps in Panama, SENAFRONT officials take fingerprints of the migrants along with other biometrics and check them against international databases.<\/p>\n

After addressing basic medical needs, they load migrants onto buses in La Pe\u00f1ita to transport them to other camps in northern Panama, and ultimately across the Costa Rican border. The governments of both countries facilitate the transportation.<\/p>\n

Though they were pulled into the controlled flow system, Castillo and Jim\u00e9nez decided they wanted to stay and build a life in Panama. Under Panamanian law, migrants are allowed to apply for asylum and other types of legal status.<\/p>\n

Despite making their intentions known, Jim\u00e9nez said SENAFRONT officials withheld their passports and forced them to board buses to two more camps.<\/p>\n

Jim\u00e9nez said authorities gave the family their passports and released them after they complained and began to video record their interactions with Panamanian officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey told us we could leave on our own, but we were out of the migratory flow,\u201d Jim\u00e9nez said. \u201cWhat happened to us was our responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

They arrived in Panama City on Dec. 31, 2019, joining thousands of migrants trying to make a living in the country.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Left:<\/strong>\u00a0Carlos Ayala, a psychologist who works with migrants at nonprofit Fe y Alegri?a, says migrants must endure physically demanding situations. (Photo by Marcus Xavier Chormicle\/Cronkite Borderlands Project)\u00a0Right:<\/strong>\u00a0The Fe y Alegri?a shelter in Panama provides assistance to a growing number of migrants seeking refuge. (Photo by Marcus Xavier Chormicle\/Cronkite Borderlands Project)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Panama faces the effects of a chain of immigration policies that has shut migrants out of other countries.<\/p>\n

Beginning in 2014, former President Barack Obama and Cuba\u2019s then-President Ra\u00fal Castro announced they would restore full diplomatic ties between the two countries, after a long history of conflict.<\/p>\n

During this process, the U.S. agreed to review its \u201cWet Foot, Dry Foot\u201d policy, which granted asylum to Cubans who reached U.S. soil and allowed them to apply for residency after a year. Under the policy, those intercepted at sea were returned to Cuba.<\/p>\n

When the policy was established in 1995, a deluge of Cubans poured into the seas on makeshift rafts, trying to make the 90-mile journey from Havana to Florida \u2013 hoping to avoid capture at sea and make it to dry land. Castillo, then a little boy, said he was one of them. But no more than 3 miles into the journey, the raft flipped over, and his mother decided to turn back.<\/p>\n

Between 2014 and the end of 2016, the number of Cuban migrants presenting themselves at the U.S.-Mexico border after making the journey by land more than tripled.<\/p>\n

They often flew to South American countries with lax visa requirements \u2013 such as Ecuador \u2013 and in the Castillo family\u2019s case, Guyana, before traveling the remaining thousands of miles by land.<\/p>\n

In November 2015, Nicaragua closed its borders to Cubans. In December 2015, Ecuador began requiring visas from Cubans to enter the country. Costa Rica and Panama both airlifted thousands of Cubans to Mexico in 2016 to continue their journeys to the United States, before following Nicaragua\u2019s lead and closing their borders. In August of that year, Colombia began deporting thousands of Cubans.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 12, 2017, just three days before leaving office, Obama terminated the two-decade old \u201cWet Foot, Dry Foot\u201d policy.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Cubans made up the second-largest group of immigrants coming into Panama through the Dari\u00e9n Gap, only behind Haitians, according to Panama\u2019s National Migration Service.<\/p>\n

Now, Cubans who make it to the U.S. \u2013 Mexico border are told by U.S. officials to wait in Mexico while their asylum requests are reviewed and processed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Caridad Laffita Garcia has always known she wanted to leave Cuba. When her time came, she flew to Nicaragua and traveled over land to Panama. She currently works as a maid in Panama. (Photo by Daja Henry\/Cronkite Borderlands Project)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cAs a young woman, I always had the desire to leave. But when you have the desire, you still have to wait for the right conditions and everything you need to be able to leave,\u201d said Caridad Laffita, a Cuban immigrant living in Hogar Luisa, a shelter run by the Catholic church in Panama.<\/p>\n

Eight months before she arrived, her husband, Pascual Michel, had taken advantage of a $20 tourism visa specifically for self-employed Cubans traveling to Panama. By the time the couple had enough money for Caridad to join him, the Panamanian government abolished the visa.<\/p>\n

Without the option of joining her husband via a tourist card, she flew to Nicaragua, which had loosened restrictions on Cuban travelers. Although she and Michel ultimately hope to travel north to the U.S., she instead went south to reunite with him.<\/p>\n

The two sought refuge at the Hogar Luisa shelter in Panama City where they\u2019re saving their money and waiting for the right conditions to continue to the United States.<\/p>\n

This is common among Cuban migrants in the country, according to Ra\u00fal Elias Ara\u00faz de Le\u00f3n, national director of Fe y Alegr\u00eda, which provides assistance to migrants and educational opportunities to the poor.<\/p>\n

\u201cCubans are a very unstable migrant population,\u201d he said. Many arrive, apply for refugee status, stay for days or months, and continue to the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of Cubans who have come through the Dari\u00e9n never wanted to stay in Panama,\u201d said Pitty, Panama\u2019s refugee agency director. \u201cThey came to the office, did an application and left (the country).\u201d<\/p>\n

The office is working on a backlog of 16,000 applications for refugee status. When he took office, the 28-year-old said some applicants had waited three to five years for decisions.<\/p>\n

In his first seven months in office, Pitty said he\u2019s received more than 20,000 applications. Stacks of applications piled feet high cover a table in his office.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Fe y Alegri?a shelter in Las Man?anitas assists migrants with rent for two months, but after that it is uncertain where migrants will live. (Photo by Marcus Xavier Chormicle\/Cronkite Borderlands Project)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It is a growing challenge for the small country whose population of 4.3 million is just 300,000 more than the state of Oklahoma, as migrants from around the world land on its doorstep with nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n

Pitty attributes the inundation of refugee applications to the country\u2019s economic promise. According to the\u00a0World Bank<\/a>, Panama has been one of the fastest-growing economies in the world over the past decade.<\/p>\n

Migrants see Panama as a relatively stable country, with an active economy that uses the U.S. dollar, he said.<\/p>\n

While the World Bank reported that the poverty rate has dropped to 12.5%, it noted that the rates were much higher in rural and indigenous communities. Moreover, it said recent the coronavirus pandemic could wipe out any gains on improving the poverty rate.<\/p>\n

While the Castillo family\u2019s refugee application is pending indefinitely, they do not have permission to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere in Panama, I thought I would have a better future for my children, because Panama promises a future for any citizen of any country, but I don\u2019t know why they won\u2019t give us the documents to work, to live life like an ordinary, decent human being,\u201d Castillo said.<\/p>\n

Fe y Alegr\u00eda helped them find a place to stay. The group assists migrants with rent for two months, but after that it is uncertain where migrants will live.<\/p>\n

Even if they were granted work permits, the former forensic medical examiner and his wife, a former veterinarian, still could not practice their professions in Panama since they are among 56 job classifications restricted to Panamanian citizens.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow are we supposed to be able to take care of our children?\u201d Jim\u00e9nez asked.<\/p>\n

Still, the family is grateful to have left Cuba.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d prefer to die free than at the hands of a dictatorship,\u201d Castillo said. \u201cPanama is a free country, and one where you can develop as a person.\u201d
\nStay Safe!!<\/p>\n\n

\n

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    For Yordany Castillo Leyva, the decision to leave Cuba was a question of life and death. 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