Cuba detente creates migrant crisis in Mexico
Cuba detente creates migrant crisis in Mexico - FT.com
Amy Stillman in Tapachula, southern Mexico
November 9, 2015
Cuban migrants cross the Suchiate River into Mexico from Guatemala, their eighth border crossing since leaving Cuba a month earlier.
"They have to move faster, there are a lot of people waiting here
without adequate living conditions," said Lionel Hernández, 28, huddling
with other Cuban migrants in the doorway of the Tapachula migration
office in southern Mexico to escape the pounding rain.
A young woman from Havana looked in dismay at a soggy stack of papers.
She had scrawled down the names of hundreds of fellow Cubans gathered
outside the Tapachula facility to help Mexican migration authorities
process their requests for transit visas. "There are more than 170
Cubans here now, but more keep arriving," she said, sighing. "It is
impossible to count them all."
As Cuban president Raúl Castro met Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto
on Friday to strengthen trade ties and smooth over past tensions, a new
political problem was mounting in the south with the huge influx of
Cubans flowing across Mexico's border.
Almost 6,500 Cubans arrived in Mexico en route to the US in the first
nine months of the year, more than five times as many as a year earlier,
according to official statistics. And the numbers have continued to
surge. Mexico's national migration institute, INM, said that more than
8,000 Cubans have been processed in Mexico so far this year.
Click link above for full article.
