Cubans in Panama Spending Christmas on the Streets Latin American Herald Tribune - EFE December 25, 2015
PASO CANOAS, Panama – Some 800 Cubans spent Christmas Eve on the streets or in shelters, and will spend Christmas Day at the Panamanian-Costa Rican border, not at their final destination as they had hoped.
“I thought I’d spend Christmas in the United States with my family,” said Sarai Santos, who spent the night of Dec. 24 with friends from her hometown of Holguin, with whom she left the island last Dec. 7.
Most of the Cubans crowded into the town of Paso Canoas are staying at shelters set up by the Catholic and Evangelical churches to meet the needs of the islanders who keep coming following a rough journey through the Colombian jungles and the Panamanian town of Puerto Obaldia.
Since Nov. 14, Costa Rica has issued almost 8,000 transit visas to Cuban immigrants who arrived by land from Panama and who have been unable to continue their journey northward because Nicaragua closed its borders, considering the policy of its neighbor an abuse of its sovereignty.
With all the migrants arriving and none leaving, Costa Rica found it could accept no more and so announced last Friday that it would stop issuing those temporary visas, a measure that left some 1,000 Cubans stranded in Panama.
Among them is Yovanka Montenegro, who arrived in Paso Canoa that Dec. 18 when the list of those allowed to enter Costa Rica had been closed.
The young woman, a native of Camaguey, asked the governments of Central America to consider the situation of her fellow Cubans.
“We just want them to give us an answer. We don’t know what will become of us, but we don’t want to go back,” Yovanka said.
Jorge Michel Campos arrived Wednesday and there’s only one thing he wants for Christmas.
“We’re begging (Nicaraguan) President Daniel Ortega to please open the border so we can reach our final destination. We’re not here because we want to be. No one, but no one, wants to be here,” he told EFE.
Selena Rojas of the Red Cross in Puerto Armuelles near the border, told EFE about the physical hardships the Cubans have suffered on their trek through the jungle and on the sea.
“They come here with many illnesses. There are kids with asthma, high blood pressure, worms in their skin, insect bites – we have to give them whatever help we can because they’re human beings,” the aid worker said.
Groups like the Red Cross and the churches are rounding up water supplies, dried food and hygiene products to continue helping those people, because the migration never ends.
Panamanian Foreign Minister Isabel De Saint Malo de Alvarado said Wednesday that the government accepts the migrants inside her country’s borders, and said the administration will work abroad to promote border openings “to permit the flow that has always existed.”
Cubans in Panama have expressed their gratitude in many ways for the food and the few comforts they have received.
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