The New York Times has played a terrible role in building up Fidel Castro in the 1950s, assisting him in his rise to power with the reporting of Herbert Matthews. Over six decades the Gray Lady backed policies that legitimized the Castro dictatorship, and in 2014 published a series of editorials advocating for the policy that President Obama eventually announced on December 17, 2014. The thaw with the Castro dictatorship coincided with rising violent repression, and the deaths of prominent pro-democracy activists.
It is also important to point out when The New York Times gets it right. This opinion piece by Lisette Poole provides a nuanced and stark report on the consequences of the Obama Cuba Policy that sparked another Cuban exodus. The policy that had been advocated by The New York Times. The article also highlights how the Obama White House ended the Wet Foot Dry Foot Policy in January 2017 that closed the door on Cubans seeking refuge. (It is also important to mention that the door was also closed on Cuban doctors trafficked by the Castro regime that same day when they ended the Cuban Medical Professional Parole program.)
The New York Times, December 18, 2019
Opinion
Two Women, 11 Countries; A Long, Strange Trip From Havana to the U.S.
Warming relations with Washington ushered in an era of hope and prosperity in 2014. But as the world watched the island’s transformation, Cubans quietly fled.
Photographs and Text by Lisette Poole
Ms. Poole is a photojournalist.
Though I was born and raised in California, Cuba has always been in my heart. I grew up hearing stories of my family joining waiting lists, and entering lotteries for permission to leave the island in the 1960s, others left on boats and rafts in the 80s and 90s. My mother and grandmother imbued me with a deeply rooted sense of our Cuban identity and I, naturally, gravitated toward the island.
I visited Cuba as a teenager and spent summers in my 20s there taking photos. I was there for a six-month stint in 2014 to document economic reforms under Raúl Castro when the United States and Cuba announced renewed relations. It was the dawn of a new era in Cuba, and an exciting time to be there. I decided to stay.
Eventually, I would come to document another reality — one of the largest waves of Cuban migration in history.
Marta Amaro and Liset Barrios in an encampment in the Darién Gap in 2016, where they spent 6 days before paying to be taken to Costa Rica.
Warming relations with the United States ushered in an era of hope and prosperity. Market reforms, coupled with an influx of American visitors, led to a sizable yet regulated private-sector boom that some Cubans benefited from. But, in reality, most were struggling to get by and felt frustrated. As the world watched the island’s transformation, Cubans quietly fled — over 43,000 in 2015 alone.
This time they were taking the long route over land from countries like Guyana, which allows Cubans to enter without a visa. The journey, commonly referred to as “la travesía,” or the crossing, touched nearly everyone on the island. I kept tabs on my cousin and his partner through Facebook when they made the monthslong voyage from Ecuador’s capital, Quito, to the United States in 2015. Like so many others with loved ones making this journey, I fervently hoped that they would make it safely to their destination.
That same year I was introduced to Marta Amaro through Mita, a woman I met at an illegal drag race in Havana, in Lenin Park. Ms. Amaro, a 51-year-old mother of three, lived in Las Yaguas, a barrio in the outskirts of the city. She was selling cooked meals out of her home, earning just enough to buy food for her family and cigarettes for the day. She told me she planned to leave along with a friend from the neighborhood, Liset Barrios.
In a country where neither education nor employment can guarantee a living wage, young women and men have turned to sex work. Ms. Barrios, 24, supported her mother, who is epileptic, with the cash she brought home. But the illicit nature of her job made her feel trapped.
I got to know Ms. Amaro and Ms. Barrios as they formulated their plan to leave. They planned to take advantage of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, the informal name given to the 1995 revision of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 that gave Cubans who reached American soil the automatic right to settle in the United States, while those intercepted at sea were sent back home. They feared the policy would end with the renewal of American-Cuban relations by the Obama administration.
On May 13, 2016, they boarded a flight to Georgetown, Guyana. They had no plan, just the name of a coyote scribbled onto a piece of paper and folded into their passports. I posed as a Cuban migrant and paid to be smuggled along with them so I could document their travesía.
They crossed from Guyana into Brazil on a canoe, after riding in an off-road van for 18 hours. They were detained by migration officials at a routine checkpoint in Peru, but Ms. Barrios charmed the officer into letting them go. In northern Colombia they boarded a rickety fishing boat and traveled across the Gulf of Urabá, part of the Caribbean Sea, in a boat whose engine failed several times in the open waters.
Ms. Amaro praying while crossing the Gulf of Urabá, between Colombia and Panama. A few months before her trip, at least 15 migrants died when their boat overturned.
They spent six days hiking in the Darién Gap, a roadless jungle along the border of Panama and Colombia. Ms. Amaro injured her leg there and sometimes had to ascend the muddy hills on her hands and knees. They rode buses through Panama, were smuggled through Costa Rica by a blue-haired coyote, and then continued on separate routes.
I stayed with Ms. Barrios, walking through the backwoods of Nicaragua alongside other migrants from Cuba, Somalia and Nepal. We arrived at the United States border 51 days after leaving Havana. Ms. Amaro would cross at Laredo, Tex., 12 days later.
That year, more than 56,000 Cubans entered the United States, mainly through border crossings from Mexico. In the end they were right: President Barack Obama repealed the “wet foot, dry foot” policy just before stepping down in 2017, six months after Ms. Amaro and Ms. Barrios made it to the United States. They were among the last to migrate during the more than 20 years that Cubans were afforded this privilege.
Efforts to quell migration have left many Cuban migrants stranded along the southern border with Mexico. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than 21,000 Cubans were detained at the border and 1,179 were detained nationwide during the 2019 fiscal year, compared with last fiscal year’s 463, a 600 percent increase.
Ms. Barrios works at a strip club in Austin, Tex., where she lives. Ms. Amaro, who lives in New Jersey, takes temporary jobs at factories and fast food restaurants. Unlike other migrants without visas to enter the United States, they were eligible for permanent residency and travel back to Cuba frequently.
It’s been five years since Mr. Obama announced the easing of restrictions on remittances and travel to Cuba. But the détente was short-lived. The island’s economy is reeling, largely because Venezuelan support has diminished and the Trump administration has revived sanctions. Opportunities for cultural exchange, business and travel have vanished. Cubans endeavor to make art and put food on the table, but hope for a better tomorrow has been dashed for now.
Ms. Amaro and Ms. Barrios were not migrants fleeing violence and war. They risked their lives for the pursuit of the American dream, and the chance to provide for the ones that were left behind. For those whose relatives have migrated, like my own and countless others, they reflect the loving, imperfect people we call family.
From left, Ms. Amaro, Ms. Barrios and her mom, Marlen, in Havana in 2018. It was the two women’s first trip back to Cuba since leaving in 2016.
Lisette Poole, a photojournalist, is the author of “La paloma y la ley,” a bilingual photo book about Liset Barrios and Marta Amaro’s journey to the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/opinion/cuba-immigrants.html