{"id":6598,"date":"2015-11-24T09:01:09","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T17:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/social-media-helps-drive-historic-cuban-exodus-to-us\/"},"modified":"2015-11-24T09:01:09","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T17:01:09","slug":"social-media-helps-drive-historic-cuban-exodus-to-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/social-media-helps-drive-historic-cuban-exodus-to-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media helps drive historic Cuban exodus to US"},"content":{"rendered":"

PENAS BLANCAS, Costa Rica \u2014<\/strong> As summer began to bake the central Cuban city of Sancti Spiritus, Elio Alvarez and Lideisy Hernandez sold their tiny apartment and everything in it for $5,000 and joined the largest migration from their homeland in decades.<\/p>\n

Buying two smartphones for $160 apiece on a layover on their way to Ecuador, they plugged themselves into a highly organized, well-funded and increasingly successful homebrewed effort to make human traffickers obsolete by using smartphones and messaging apps on much of the 3,400-mile overland journey that\u2019s become Cubans\u2019 main route to the U.S.<\/p>\n

Some 45,000 Cubans are expected to move by bus, boat, taxi and on foot from Ecuador and other South and Central American countries to the Texas and California borders this year, afraid that the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba will mean an imminent end to special immigration privileges that date to the opening of the Cold War. With thousands more taking rafts across the Florida Straits, 2015 may witness the biggest outflow of Cubans since the 1980 Mariel boatlift that hauled 125,000 people across the Florida Straits.<\/p>\n

The overland exodus has caused a border crisis in Central America, set off tensions in the newly friendly U.S.-Cuban relationship and sparked rising calls in the U.S. to end Cubans\u2019 automatic right to legal residency once they touch U.S. soil.<\/p>\n

At the heart of it all is Cubans\u2019 ability to cross some of the world\u2019s most dangerous territory relatively unscathed by the corrupt border guards, criminal gangs and human traffickers known as coyotes who make life hell for so many other Latin American migrants. Key to that ability is the constant flow of information between migrants starting the journey and those who have just completed it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who\u2019ve arrived have gotten in touch with their acquaintances, their friends, and tell them how the route is. That means that no one needs a coyote,\u201d said Hernandez, a 32-year-old psychologist. \u201cYou go making friends along the way. I myself have 70, 80-something friends on Facebook who\u2019ve already gotten to the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuban migrants start with an advantage others can only dream of: Many countries along the route grant Cubans free passage because their government does not respond to most requests for information about illegal migrants that would allow them to be deported. And many Cubans who run out of money along the way have access to hundreds or thousands of dollars in backup funds sent by relatives who belong to one of the United States\u2019 most prosperous immigrant groups.<\/p>\n

Once they reach the U.S. border, they can just show up at an established U.S. port of entry and declare their nationality, avoiding the dangerous desert crossings that confront many migrants who try to avoid U.S. Border Patrol. Federal data shows 45,000 Cubans appeared at U.S. land border points in the 12 months ending Sept. 20, and at least as many are expected in the coming year.<\/p>\n

But along the way, Cubans still must navigate jungles, rivers, at least seven international borders and countries in the grip of gangs responsible for some of the world\u2019s highest homicide rates.<\/p>\n

Asked their secret, Cubans interviewed in shelters along Costa Rica\u2019s northern border with Nicaragua almost universally pointed to cheap smartphones, data plans and Facebook.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re completely, always, alert to our phones,\u201d Alvarez said, gesturing to his Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini outside a border station in northern Costa Rica, where he and some 2,000 other Cuban migrants were stuck waiting for resolution of a regional conflict set off by Nicaragua\u2019s closure of the crossing. \u201cThis is our best friend, the phone. It\u2019s always on, always ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

The metallic \u201czing!\u201d of a new message arriving in the Facebook Messenger app has become the soundtrack to this year\u2019s historic migration as Cubans consult friends further along the route for tips on bus routes, border closures, even how much to bribe the notoriously corrupt Colombian police.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tell you when you can get money, at what moment you can arrive somewhere, what hotel to go to,\u201d said Annieli de los Reyes, pharmacist from the eastern city of Camaguey. \u201cIn all of those things, you run less risk and go with more security and peace of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

While many move across large swathes of territory independent of coyotes, others still depend on traffickers, most commonly when they need to get across complicated borders.<\/p>\n

On Nov. 10, a U.S.-backed Costa Rican task force on human trafficking arrested 12 people suspected of helping run an international ring that charged Cubans between $7,000 and $15,000 to be smuggled from South America to the U.S. border, or $400 to be moved safely across Costa Rica.<\/p>\n

Alongside the anti-trafficking operation, Costa Rica began holding Cubans in the town of Paso Canoas on the Panamanian border. Their numbers grew to around 1,600 until Costa Rica announced on Nov. 13 that it would allow them to transit the country to Nicaragua. Complaining that it wasn\u2019t consulted, Nicaragua dispatched soldiers to the border to block the Cubans\u2019 passage, setting off minor clashes at the Penas Blancas crossing on Nov. 15.<\/p>\n

The dispute has left some 2,000 Cubans stranded in shelters in Guanacaste province on the Nicaraguan border, with dozens more arriving daily. The local sales office for telecommunications company Movistar has increased the number of sales vans along the border from two to seven, most stationed permanently outside the Cubans\u2019 temporary encampments in schools and churches, selling 2-for-1 $3-per-megabyte data packages to a steady stream of Cuban migrants.<\/p>\n

Central America governments have called an emergency meeting on the crisis in El Salvador on Tuesday. Nicaragua, a close socialist ally of Cuba, has not publicly responded to a Costa Rican proposal to create a \u201chumanitarian corridor\u201d for Cubans to move unhindered toward the U.S.<\/p>\n

Cuba, meanwhile, has made a series of public statements blaming U.S. emigration policies for drawing so many from their homeland, draining the country of badly needed professionals and working-age adults. Ironically, the Cuban government has been joined by an increasing number of Cuban-American legislators in the U.S. who say the Cold War-era Cuban Adjustment Act that grants new migrants special privileges is being abused by economic migrants instead of granting asylum to political refugees as originally intended.<\/p>\n

Outside observers say Cuba\u2019s own policies also fuel emigration, which siphons dissatisfied Cubans away from the island and increases the number of people injecting badly needed remittances into Cuba\u2019s cash-starved economy. The communist government did away with a hated exit permit three years ago and also began allowing Cubans to establish permanent residence in the U.S. while maintaining their property rights and access to social services in Cuba.<\/p>\n

Geny Machado worked as a private shopkeeper in the Havana neighborhood of Guanabacoa before he hopscotched from Trinidad and Tobago to Venezuela, where he started a months-long journey north with stops to work and earn money for the next stages. Other Cubans interviewed in Costa Rica were making their way from as far south as Chile, Argentina and Brazil.<\/p>\n

Machado showed a reporter a string of Facebook messages from a friend recently arrived in the U.S. advising him on the best route from Guatemala City to the Mexican border; what to say to Mexican border guards once he arrived; what hotel to stay at on his first night in Mexico; and even the nightly rate: $10.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one who\u2019s ahead guides the one behind,\u201d said Machado, 45. \u201cWe go along communicating like that. Social networks are what\u2019s helping Cubans along the whole migration route, more than the coyotes.\u201d<\/p>\n

When migrants are stopped by border guards along the route, officials\u2019 first step is contacting the migrant\u2019s country to confirm their identity. In the case of Cubans, that\u2019s often impossible. The Cuban government doesn\u2019t respond to as many as 90 percent of inquiries about people with Cuban passports but no visas, said Mario Madrazo Ubach, head of immigration control at Mexico\u2019s National Migration Institute. Since entering the country without a visa in itself isn\u2019t a crime in Mexico, Mexican authorities generally give the Cubans 20 days to leave the country, which they use to get to the U.S. border and claim legal residency. Similar scenarios take place throughout Central America.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to find Cubans in the back of tractor-trailers,\u201d Madrazo said.<\/p>\n

Still, Cubans are not immune to the dangers of northbound migration. A migrants\u2019 rights group said in July that Mexican border officials had been holding Cubans in border inspection stations until their relatives in the U.S. sent as much as $5,000 to win their freedom.<\/p>\n

Mario Martinez, 24, trained as a computer programmer but worked in a barber shop in the Havana neighborhood of Marianao until he left for Ecuador this fall with his friend and traveling partner Manuel Gonzalez. Sitting on the floor of a public bathroom next to the only available electrical outlet he could find in a bus station on the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border, he said that Facebook friends had been steering the two men away from coyotes, saying that \u201cit was going to end up being very expensive, that they were going to charge us more money, that they could cheat us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first ones, sure, they had to do this with \u2018contacts,\u2019 the great majority had coyotes,\u201d Martinez said as Gonzalez\u2019s Facebook Messenger app pinged with the sound of new messages arriving. \u201cBut there were coyotes who were picking people up to cheat them, to kill people, to rape them. So now we Cubans are showing each other how to do the journey on our own.\u201d<\/p>\n

_________<\/p>\n

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https:\/\/twitter.com\/mweissenstein<\/p>\n

_________<\/p>\n

Christine Armario in Havana and Eduardo Castillo and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PENAS BLANCAS, Costa Rica \u2014 As summer began to bake the central Cuban city of Sancti Spiritus, Elio Alvarez and Lideisy Hernandez sold their tiny apartment and everything in it for $5,000 and joined the largest migration from their homeland in decades. Buying two smartphones for $160 apiece on a layover on their way to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6598"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}