2 Cuban sisters’ 4,200-mile journey to the US and a new life
HAVANA — The Rolo González sisters walked out of Nicaragua’s main airport and peered out onto a sea of young men.
The “coyotes” squinted back, trying to find the people they would smuggle to the United States. Those were the first steps that 19-year-old Merlyn and 24-year-old Melanie took outside of Cuba. Toting two small backpacks and Melanie’s 1-year-old daughter, the women realized just how alone they were.
Their odyssey of more than 4,200 miles would lead the medical students to question their past lives and race unknowingly against a ticking legal clock.
MODERN TRADITION
The sisters’ voyage is one that thousands of Cubans have made in a historic wave of migration, fueled by the island’s troubled economy and one of the world’s highest rates of inflation.
The exodus prompted a January Biden administration measure to cut back on Cuban migrants, whom the U.S. had historically welcomed even as it turned away people from other nations.
The Rolo González sisters lost hope for the future in their country. Their optimism rested in the hazy prospect of life in the U.S. and a brighter future for the little girl who would have no memories of the island.
“All you know is that you’re going to a foreign country where you’ve never been, to put your life in the hands of people you’ve never met,” the younger sister said. “You have your destination, but you don’t know what awaits you on your journey.”
DREAMS AND REALITY
Over the past two years, American authorities have
detained Cubans nearly 300,000 times on the border with Mexico. Some have been sent back but the vast majority have stayed under immigration rules dating to the Cold War.
While they had trained as doctors, the Rolo González sisters spent their free time on the outskirts of Havana scraping together enough to buy basics like baby formula for Melanie’s daughter.
When Melanie’s daughter, Madisson, was born, she and her economist husband suggested their family migrate to the U.S. He would go first and then they would seek to migrate legally.
In May 2022, he flew to Nicaragua. Shortly after, Melanie said, he left her for another woman.
She still planned to migrate, though, now with her little sister.
TAKING OFF
The sisters sold a house left to them by their father, along with appliances and anything else of value in exchange for American dollars. With money from friends and family in Florida, they had $20,000.
It bought the Rolo González sisters flights to Nicaragua and passage overland to the U.S. border with one of the smuggling networks.
Days before their flight, the two sorted through stacks of medicine, clothes and powdered baby milk — as much of their lives as they could fit into two backpacks.
The sisters, like many other Cubans, were counting on the relative ease with which Cuban migrants could enter the U.S.
WONDER AND HEARTBREAK
On Dec. 13, the Rolo González sisters walked out of their home potentially forever.
The last thing they told their mother before leaving her standing alone in the Havana airport was “I love you.”
After landing in Nicaragua, they walked out of the airport with a smuggler who had a picture of them on his phone and received instructions via WhatsApp.
It was time to make the first payment: $3,600 in cash.
Once they paid, they began a 12-hour drive with a “coyote,” arriving at a ramshackle house at midnight. They were awoken before sunrise to trek through a rugged mountain dotted with corn and coffee farms — the border between Nicaragua and Honduras.
The sisters continued that way for days, winding up through Honduras and Guatemala by bus, car, and foot along Central America’s volcanospeckled landscapes.
Back in Cuba, their mother clung to texts and photos.
“There’s a horrible emptiness in this house. I look (around) and it’s like I have nothing,” she said.
JUST IN TIME
The Rolo González sisters dozed and rode along with 18 other migrants at 3 a.m. in an old blue van carrying mostly Cubans.
The car veered off the road, tumbling 10 times as it fell and throwing Merlyn and Madisson out a broken window. The two were not seriously injured but not everyone was as lucky: in the coming days, they would learn that the mother of an 8-year-old Cuban boy had died in the crash.
On New Year’s Eve the sisters waded the Rio Grande from Juarez to El Paso. They were detained by Border Patrol agents and quickly released under 60 days parole.
Days later, the new Biden restriction was announced. They had made it just in time.