Cuban Activist Jorge Cervantes, Now a Forced Migrant, Is Stranded in Mexico

State Security gave the former Unpacu militant the choice between prison or exile

Cuban activist Jorge Cervantes García was banished by the Cuban regime on September 10 / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 10 January 2025– Cuban activist Jorge Cervantes García, member of the Cuba Primero movement and former militant of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, longs for the Island. From a border point in Mexico, where he has been since the end of last December, he confesses to 14ymedio that he would like to return to his country, but not to “go to a punishment cell simply for the fact of thinking differently and fighting for the freedom of my people.” He misses his children, his wife and his family.

Four months ago, State Security officials went to the punishment cell in the Aguadores prison in Santiago de Cuba, where he had spent six months for an alleged crime classified as “other acts against the security of the State,” to force him into exile, he says. “Cervantes, since what you do on the streets is unbearable, you are going to receive 15 years in prison at the prosecutor’s request,” they told him. Then they gave him the choice between three years in prison or leaving the country.

After consulting with members of his movement, he concluded that “the wisest thing was to accept exile, because very little can be done from a Cuban prison to continue the fight.” The activist was taken out of his cell and escorted to Havana. “They put me on a plane bound for Guyana” on September 10, he says.

His journey, with the United States as the final goal, began in Georgetown. So far, he has crossed 10 countries: Guyana, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, where he is stranded. Despite having an “amparo” [protection], the authorities prevented him from boarding a flight to the U.S. border. The opponent clarifies that he cannot consider himself “a political exile” because he has not yet found a place that will give him refuge and legalize his stay.

The activist was taken out of his cell and escorted to Havana. “I was put on a plane bound for Guyana” on September 10, he says]

Never, in 57 years of life, did Cervantes think he would face migration. He never imagined the long and tiring walks alongside immigrants from China, India, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Africa and Cuba, “people with political, economic and religious motives.” Nor did he imagine the “heartbreaking” stories he would hear in that search for a better future and freedom.

“Mothers traumatized because their girls or boys were raped in front of them, people who died, elderly people lost in the river currents. I have seen tears in the eyes of doctors and professionals who are part of immigrant caravans and experienced horrors they never imagined,” he says.

From his personal experience, Cervantes says that migration is a phenomenon that “has no solution in sight.” The reality is “that many people are afraid to say that the governments are closely linked to mafias, with criminal organizations engaged in trafficking migrants.”

For the banished opponent, the real mafias, “the most harmful,” are “the government soldiers protected by law who arrest migrants and exploit them, humiliate them, mistreat them and take everything from them to let them pass from one place to another. From country to country you have to pay one, two, three, four times to board a plane, to take a bus. They have all their scams well organized.”

One example is the well-known travel packages advertised online, which offer to “get you out and take you” to any country. “They paint a pretty picture for you to accept and pay. They encourage you to leave by promising a safe way,” but the reality is that they’re going to assault you. “You enter a spider web” where they abandon you, he explains.

For Jorge Cervantes, the real mafias, “the most harmful,” are “the government soldiers who arrest migrants and exploit them” / 14ymedio

Cervantes remembers that in Panama, “after you pass the town of Bajo Chiquito and cross the Darién jungle, there are people who receive you and give you a little bag of food.” The activist warns that while in one place “they help you, in another they hit you.”

According to the opponent, “there are soldiers who know that you are being assaulted and do nothing, because they live off that.” The migrant is treated as “a commodity,” he says.

In the same way, he regrets that “many people talk about how to solve the problem but they don’t really want to do it,” because it’s a business, which has also brought prosperity to some remote areas.

The Cuban activist says that in Necoclí, a Colombian municipality that was practically abandoned, “there are now more than 500 prosperous businesses” because it’s a mandatory stop for irregular migrants in their transit to the United States. Another “place in the middle of nowhere” is Bajo Chiquito,” which he calls a “lost pueblo” in the Darién jungle, where foreigners “bring life, development and well-being.”

Clothed in the Cuban flag, Cervantes trusts that Donald Trump’s government will maintain a firm stance against the Cuban regime, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

The opponent, in any case, wants for Cuba what many people enjoy in free, democratic countries. “You can express yourself within being beat up or put in prison. Your children can grow up safe and sound, in schools that educate them, not indoctrinate them.” It hurts him to think of his family and fellow fighters in Cuba, who are “going hungry, with repression, harassment and death.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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