National Post (National Edition)
The new Cuban exodus
Migrants cross deadly, roadless Panamanian jungle to escape to U.S.
Led by smugglers armed with knives and machetes, Mayra Reyes and 14 other Cubans sloshed through swamps and rivers and suffered hordes of mosquitoes as they struggled across the notorious Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, the only northsouth stretch of the Americas to defy road-builders.
After walking for three days, the group reached the foot of a steep, scrubby mountain. There, the smugglers peeled away and told the Cubans they would have to press ahead alone.
“I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” the 32-year-old hairdresser from Havana said. “What the guides did was get us to the mountain, where we had to wait for nightfall while these green and black poisonous frogs got on top of us.”
Hundreds of Cubans like Ms. Reyes are taking that arduous new route toward the United States, trekking across the 135 kilometres of steamy tropical jungle that divides Colombia and Panama, through mountains, ravines, and muddy ground teeming with poisonous reptiles, jag- uars, wild boars, guerrillas and drug traffickers,
And after that, they still face a journey across 2,700 km and six countries to reach the United States.
Panamanian immigration authorities detained 800 Cubans near the border with Colombia from January through the first week in July, compared to 400 in all of 2011.
“We have detained up to 90 people in one week,” said Frank Abrego, director of Panama’s National Borders Service.
Thousands of islanders over the decades have used rudimentary rafts to travel the 150 km that separate Cuba from the United States, but that journey can be deadly, and the U.S. Coast Guard has been patrolling the Florida Straits more aggressively, halting many before they can reach Florida. Most Cubans who reach U.S. soil can stay, but those intercepted at sea are usually returned to their homeland, and U.S. figures indicate that more than 1,000 have been stopped at sea so far this year.
So Cubans have turned to land routes. Nearly 90% of all undocumented Cubans who make it to America now come overland, usually through Mexico, rather than reaching U.S. shores by boat, according to U.S. Cus- toms and Border Protection.
The route across the Darien Gap arose partly because many Cubans are now using the South American nation of Ecuador as the start of their path to the United States. President Rafael Correa eliminated visa requirements for Cuba in 2008.
The result has been a flood of islanders travelling to the South American nation. Few, though, cross the Darien, whose jungle is so dense, the ground so swampy or mountainous, that the few attempts to cross it by car or motorcycle have taken weeks or months. That terrain has frustrated planners trying to link South and North America with the Pan-American Highway.
Mildred Morales, a 34-yearold Cuban nurse who was part of Ms. Reyes’ group, said she paid US$300 just to cross the border into Panama. She had spent about US$1,000 since leaving Ecuador three days earlier.
“From the moment you leave Ecuador you have to pay people off, police and immigration officials in Ecuador and in Colombia,” the Havana woman said. “This is not cheap.”
After climbing the mountain, the group walked another six hours to a river. From there, Panamanian authorities detained them and took them eight hours by canoe to the town of Yaviza, where the Pan-American Highway ends in Panama. From there, they went by car to a detention shelter in the town of Meteti.
The Cubans remained in Meteti for several days until immigration authorities gave them, like most Cuban migrants, a temporary permit allowing them to be in the country as long as they report to authorities every two weeks. Authorities in Meteti say it’s rare to see the Cubans again.