MIAMI, United States. – Some 872 Cuban migrants requested refuge in Mexico only in the month of January 2023, reported recently the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (COMAR).
In the list of nationals who requested the most asylum in the Aztec country, Cubans reached fourth place, only surpassed by Haitians (4,305), Hondurans (2,837) and Venezuelans (1,337).
From January to November 2022, some 17,487 Cuban migrants applied for asylum in Mexico, which placed the island in second place on the list of countries with the most asylum applications.
Cuba is experiencing an unprecedented migratory crisis, where not only nationals who travel to Nicaragua and undertake the journey to the southern border of the United States through Mexico are counted, but also the rafters intercepted by the Coast Guard of the northern country.
At the beginning of this year, Some 5,000 migrants from various countries, including an unspecified number of Cubans, protested the southern border of Mexico, where they entered by force to go to the COMAR offices, according to international media reported.
In January of this year it also emerged that some 5,961 Cuban migrants crossed the Darién jungle -the natural border between Panama and Colombia- in 2022, according to data published by the Panamanian government.
Also recently transcended that 4,241 Cuban migrants had requested refuge in Brazil, a record number. After Venezuelans, Cubans were the second nationality that made the most refugee requests, according to data from the Observatory of International Migration of Brazil (OBMigra).
The migratory crisis that Cuba is currently experiencing is the largest to date since 1959. The records of the number of Cubans who entered the United States by water or sea last year pulverize any other previous record.
In short, in the economic hardships and the lack of elementary freedoms that Cubans suffer is the basis of the bleeding that the Island is experiencing, by sea and land. Cubans know, as demonstrated by the July 11, 2021which is a structural crisis without a medium-term solution.
