The Argentine journalist Carolina Amoroso, correspondent for TN and Canal 13, stated that the massive exodus of Cubans is in itself irrefutable proof of the failure of the system that expels them, and that the right question in the face of this reality is not how people leave, but what is happening in that place that drives them to risk everything.
Amoroso said this in the context of an interview conducted after the premiere of his documentary "Cuba, the Island that is Fading Away", filmed clandestinely over a week in Havana on a tourist visa, and aired by TN, Telenoche, and the Aura platform.
"Exoduses do not lie, migrations do not lie. When you have a population willing to risk their lives to leave a place, what you need to ask is, what is happening in that place that someone is willing to risk everything to escape, even at the possibility of losing their own life?" declared the journalist in an interview with CiberCuba.
To illustrate his argument, Amoroso drew on his own field experience: in 2022, he conducted documentary coverage in the Darién jungle, the dangerous migration route between Colombia and Panama, where he primarily encountered Venezuelan migrants, but also Haitians and Cubans.
"When you see entire families with little children, given the number of savage attacks against women and girls in Darién, and you see people willing to go through that to chase the so-called American dream and journey through all of Central America to reach the United States, you realize they must have come from a place of failure," he stated.
The journalist was emphatic in labeling Cuba and Venezuela as "failed states from any angle you look at them," and emphasized the magnitude of the phenomenon: "It’s not just a few; it’s not a handful of people. We are talking about exoduses of millions, not thousands."
The data supports his claim. More than 850,000 Cubans arrived in the United States between 2022 and mid-2024, according to the Customs and Border Protection Office of that country, far exceeding the Mariel exodus -125,000 people in 1980- and the balseros crisis -35,000 in 1994- combined.
In the Darién specifically, almost 6,000 Cubans crossed the jungle in 2022.
Amoroso also identified an element that, in his view, clouds the understanding of the Cuban drama: the romanticization of the revolution that has prevailed for decades in Argentine artistic and intellectual circles.
"What I find, it seems to me, somewhat misleading about the Cuban drama is precisely this element of romanticization," she noted, adding that this was exactly the driving force behind her documentary: "What I wanted to portray was real Cuba, the Cuba that Cubans truly live every day, a drama that has been ongoing for decades."
"It has caused a transgenerational damage in Cuba that is incredibly painful to see and hear in the testimonies," concluded Amoroso.
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