Cubans stranded in Panama demand passage to US
PASO CANOAS: Thousands of Cubans stranded in Panama, many increasingly desperate and penniless, demanded Thursday that borders closed to them in Central America be reopened to allow them to reach the United States.
A growing mass of around 3,000 Cubans on the Panama-Costa Rica border risk triggering another regional migration crisis, weeks after 8,000 compatriots were cleared out of Costa Rica on special flights to El Salvador or Mexico in what officials insisted was a oneoff operation.
Nicaragua and Costa Rica have since late last year closed their frontiers to any more Cubans.
But citizens of the Communist island keep coming, lured by America’s Cold War-era policy of guaranteeing them easy entry and a fast-track to residency.
This isn’t a problem we’ve caused ourselves ... We’re only a transit country. Rodolfo Aguilera, Panama’s security minister
On Wednesday, about 1,200 migrants - most of them Cubans, but also some from Africa and Asia stormed the border, overwhelming officials and entering into Costa Rica.
Within hours though, all but 120 of them were convinced to go back into Panama to await a new solution for them.
Panama and Costa Rica are both exasperated with the US policy which they say acts as a magnet.
Costa Rica accused Washington of maintaining a ‘perverse’ stance in welcoming only Cubans.
President Luis Guillermo Solis wrote a letter to his US counterpart Barack Obama complaining about the situation.
Panama’s security minister, Rodolfo Aguilera, said: “This isn’t a problem we’ve caused ourselves ... We’re only a transit country.”
In Paso Canoas, a town on the Panama-Costa Rica border, the Cubans are sleeping in improvised shelters in shops and old buildings with no electricity or water.
Some of them walked in suffocating tropical heat to the border to press their demand to be allowed through.
“We want to keep going,” they yelled as around 20 Costa Rican police prevented them from passing through. — AFP