A Cuban woman who posts on TikTok under the name @50tonadefuego shared on Monday the story of her migration journey from Cuba to the United States, a journey that began in 2016 and led her to cross 13 countries under extreme conditions before she was able to surrender to U.S. immigration authorities.
In the video published on her TikTok account, the woman explains that her starting point was French Guiana, a common destination for Cuban migrants of that time. "I left through French Guiana because that was the way you could leave back then, in 2016," she recounts.
After four days in that territory, he traveled to Brazil, where he worked at a hotel for about a year to save money and continue his journey.
From Brazil, he moved to Peru, where he combined working in a restaurant with selling stuffed potatoes from the high ground of a market. "I started making stuffed potatoes and began selling them, which helped me gather some money," he recounts. It was precisely during his stay in Peru when the government of Barack Obama and the regime of Raúl Castro eliminated the wet foot, dry foot policy on January 12, 2017, a change that radically altered the conditions for thousands of Cubans in transit and led to a 71% drop in the arrivals of rafters that same year.
From Peru, she passed through Ecuador—"a terrible cold," she remembers—without stopping, and arrived in Colombia, where she faced one of the toughest stretches of the journey. She attempted to cross into Panama on four occasions: the first three times she was caught and sent back. "Three times I was caught in Panama and three times I was returned to Colombia. The fourth time was when I finally succeeded," she says.
Once he overcame the Darién Gap, he traveled through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala until he reached Mexico, where he obtained a transit permit that allowed him to travel by bus to the border with the United States. That document, valid for 20 days, does not authorize work and is designed for Cuban migrants to travel north and apply for asylum.
Upon reaching the border, she crossed through a "roulette," paying 25 cents, and voluntarily surrendered to immigration authorities. She was transferred to a migrant detention center, where she stayed for 18 days. During that time, her credible fear interview request—the first step in the asylum process—was approved. "The Cuban doesn't have to tell lies or say anything, simply share the life they have lived in Cuba for you to approve the credible right now," she states.
However, she was unable to leave the prison immediately. In Colombia, she had been robbed and all her documents were stolen, so she had to request a birth certificate from Cuba from within the prison to verify her identity.
The protagonist announced that she will share the rest of the story in a second video, but she summed up her experience with a phrase that captures the weight of the journey: "It wasn't easy at all!"
Testimonials like that of this Cuban join those of other migrants who have recounted their journeys through jungles, borders, and detention centers to reach U.S. territory, reflecting the conditions that drive thousands of Cubans to leave the island each year.
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