Cubans pay up to $10,000 to travel from Nicaragua to the United States border

Cuban migrants pay outrageous sums to traffickers on the Central American route to make the journey from Nicaragua to the United States as quickly as possible. To this must be added the expensive plane tickets to leave the island, which without direct connections add more obstacles and money to spend day by day.

A BBC agency report this week, with several interviews with Cuban migrants who entered the United States by this route, confirms the amounts of money the socalled “coyotes” are asking for. Between November and February of this year, almost 40,000 Cubans crossed the southern border into this country.

Some make the route from Nicaragua to the United States on borrowed money, but there are people who have sold their houses and everything they have in them in order to be able to buy the ticket and then pay to make their way to the next stop continue since they landed in Managua.

Tickets to Nicaragua are not cheap either, people are still “crazy looking for tickets”. They explain that there are kilometers of queues in front of the ticket offices waiting for the opportunity to purchase a ticket. They add that Cubans are willing to pay any price. Up to $4,000 was paid for these tickets.

«I drove from Pinar del Río and took the road to Holguín because that’s where I caught the flight to Managua with a stopover in the Dominican Republic. It’s chasing the flights to see where you can fly to,” a Cuban who arrived in the US last January told the BBC. They all assure that, in addition to the speeding ticket, they had to pay large sums of money to human traffickers.

10 THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A TRIP FROM NICARAGUA TO THE UNITED STATES

The Cubans reported that when you arrive in Nicaragua, the “coyotes are waiting for you and take you from the airport to Honduras. “It averages about $10,000 overall because not only is it the very expensive ticket, but it gives money to the coyotes for every country you go through,” they assured. You also have to give money to the police to let you pass and not deport you.

Others say they go through more than five countries. “I’ve assembled planes, trucks, boats, buses, trucks full of cow shit. I crossed the jungle, climbed hills I thought would die. I left Cuba on December 22 and finally arrived at the border on January 10, a Cuban migrant told the news agency.

They point out that Cubans can be seen in the markets of Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, buying canned goods, bottled water or toilets to face the long road ahead until they reach the United States. Wire transfers from Miami get them thousands of dollars to leave behind from country to country.