Cubans do not rule out any escape route from the island. Just a few hours after Cubatur’s announcement of the sale of tourist packages to Venezuela, some clients arrived this Wednesday morning at the state agency’s office at 23 and L, in Havana. Since the night before, some prices were leaked and, due to how cheap the reservation was, some decided to buy right away.
“I wasn’t interested in the package,” said a 45-year-old woman who was trying to buy a reservation on Cubatur. The woman from Havana, without doing many calculations, affirmed that it is much cheaper for her to go to Venezuela, and from there emigrate to another country, than to leave the island for Nicaragua.
The agency reported on the afternoon of this Tuesday that the following day it would put up for sale three tourist packages to the island of Margarita, which include stays for three, four and seven nights, with departures on Tuesdays and Fridays starting on August 23. . The sale also includes a tourist card for a single entry to the South American country for a cost of 30 euros “to be paid in cash at the time of purchase”, which eliminates the cumbersome consular procedure for the Venezuelan visa.
The cost of the visitor’s card is not included in the price of the packages, which cost 775 MLC (freely convertible currency) per person for three nights, 800 for four, and 870 for seven. All reservations, which they can be paid with cards issued by banks on the Island, they include the round trip ticket, lodging, transfers to hotels and to a mall for purchases, as well as “a meal plan” that includes “breakfast and dinner”.
The cost of the visitor card is not included in the price of the packages
“They sent me the prices last night and today at dawn I ran here,” said another of the clients who was anxiously waiting for the sale of the packages to begin and complained that, as always happens, “they report things and when one arrives to the offices the state employees do not know anything or are learning about the announcement at that moment”.
However, after the mistreatment of some Cubatur employees, both she and the other waiting clients found out that the tourist card that the agency will manage will be valid for 30 days and, since it is valid for a single entry, the clients they will have to pay the 30 euros every time they return to Venezuela by this route.
Cubans have always considered Venezuela a small safety valve. Some have taken this country as a springboard after desert from official missions, mainly in the areas of Health and Education, and thus continue to other countries such as Colombia or undertake the dangerous journey to the United States, also because they have decided to reside in the South American country and create a family.
In addition, the same personnel who have gone on missions or other residents in Cuba who have met nationals of that country, through various means, have acquired contacts to obtain a letter of invitation and fly to that country with the aim of reaching the United States. This route was very recurrent before Ecuador established a free visa for Cubans in 2014, when the dry foot/wet foot policy was still in force.
The exodus was very notorious between 2010 and 2014, when many reports of extortion of Cubans by Venezuelan soldiers came to light. Some had to leave their passports in the hands of the military and police and escape from checkpoints near the border with Colombia, to continue their journey.
Cubans have always considered Venezuela a small safety valve. Some have taken this country as a springboard after ‘deserting’ from official missions
In those years it was also common for cooperators in the health sector to abandon official missions because the Cuban Medical Professional Parole. East US government program, which was active from 2006 to 2017, granted visas to professionals who absconded from these missions. The deserters They went to Colombia to request the parole and, when they were identified on the way, they had to bribe the authorities, both from Venezuela and Colombia, to be able to continue to Bogotá and manage the documents at the US Embassy.
Even so, many Cubans left for the United States this way. However, some who did not meet the conditions for the Cuban Medical Professional Parole had to cross the dreaded Darién jungle, as thousands of nationals have done in the last two years. of the Island who resided in Venezuela itself or nations such as Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Guyana.
Given this scenario, entering the Darién Gap with the intention of emigrating to the United States becomes very dangerous, as well as unnecessary if one considers the Nicaraguan route, which maintains free visas for Cubans.
Although ticket prices between Cuba and Managua continue to be high, at approximately $3,200, plus the cost of the journey to the United States, choosing this route eliminates a large section that includes four countries and the jungle between Colombia and Panama, where have they found the death of several nationals of the Island in the last two years.
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