José Luis Machado, a Cuban migrant stranded in Tapachula, Chiapas, works as a human statue on the streets of the city to earn income while he waits to regularize his immigration situation in Mexico.
According to Diario del Sur, Machado remains motionless for several minutes amid the constant traffic and intense heat of Tapachula, turning urban art into his sole means of support in the face of the impossibility of accessing formal employment without documents or work permits.
His story clearly depicts the ingenuity and resilience of thousands of Cubans caught in the migratory limbo at the Mexican southern border.
Tapachula has become the main gathering point for Cuban migrants in Mexico.
Approximately 8,000 Cubans have arrived in the city in recent months, and in 2024, over 16,000 asylum applications were submitted by Cuban citizens to the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, making them the second largest group of applicants.
Since the beginning of 2026, the city has been receiving between two and three weekly flights with deported Cubans directly from the United States, as a result of the tightening of immigration policies under the Trump administration.
In the first two months of the year, at least 2,000 Cubans and Venezuelans were deported and transferred to Chiapas and Tabasco, many of whom had decades of residency in the United States and arrived without resources.
Without access to work permits or fast regularization pathways, Cubans survive in the informal economy: selling coffee, charging mobile phones, or, like Machado, practicing street art.
The situation in Tapachula is one of growing tension. Last Wednesday, municipal officials from the Centinela program beat and violently evicted a group of Cuban migrants —including individuals aged 60 and 70— in Miguel Hidalgo Park in the city.
At least four people were injured in that incident, which was recorded on video and generated outrage. Among the shouts of the witnesses, one could hear: "Discrimination!".
A municipal worker was suspended after being caught in the images assaulting one of the migrants.
The affected Cubans held temporary permits and survived precisely through informality, the same resource that José Luis Machado turns to each day under the Chiapas sun.
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