Doctor Alexander Jesús Figueredo Izaguirre, who lost his job due to his outspoken stance against the Cuban government and left the island after being systematically harassed, shared part of his journey to the United States on his social networks.
“A part of me died in the Darien jungle seeing lost children, drowned and dead people and not being able to do anything just look and continue”, published the Cuban health who together with his colleague Alexander Pupo Casas left Cuba and took the route to Guyana. “To think that the next one could be me, my physical and human conditions are at the limit.”
According to official figures from the National Migration Service (SNM), until April this year 11,487 irregular migrants had crossed the Dariénof which only 15 were Venezuelans, 6,803 Haitians and 1,885 Cubans.
Figueredo says that it has “hurt him to the hair” and has faced temperatures below zero and more than 38 degrees. He has walked stretches of more than 100 kilometers, “slept on the floor, in a church, crossing trails, rivers, seas and jungles.”
The adversities he has had to overcome, he says, have made him “stronger physically and ideologically.” In his message he points out that “God does not give burdens to any child that they cannot bear, I think the weight has passed with me, since the permanent harassment in Cuba, my profession, my family.”
The Cuban doctor hopes that as a reward he will have “strength and life to fight for a free Cuba and hug my own again.”
On his Facebook wall, he also shared other images next to the Pupo toilet of the route they took to get to the US and why they had to go through Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. And one more from Capurganá, a village in the municipality of Acandí, belonging to Chocó (Colombia) and an obligatory point before entering the Darién jungle.
“We are right now between the border between Peru and Ecuador,” narrates in another video published on the same social network by the doctor Alexander Pupo and that records part of the journey before arriving in Colombia. “We are passing through, we had to pass through here because we are going to take a bus that is going to take us out of this area.” While Figueredo expresses: “Homeland and life in Peru and Ecuador.”
Last May, Pupo published an image at the foot of the InterCaribbean Airways plane with the text “Goodbye, my beautiful Cubita.” The doctor noted in a video his pain for leaving the Island, “but I have the hope that one day I will be able to return when I am free or to fight to be free”.
________________________
Collaborate with our work:
The team of 14ymedio is committed to doing serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time becoming a member of our journal. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
