A Cuban shows a passport and travel reservation during a protest in front of the Ecuadorean Embassy on Friday in Havana. Most of the Cubans emigrating to the USA come by land via Ecuador, whose visa-free immigration policy made it one of the only countries in the hemisphere that allowed Cubans to enter with no questions asked.
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He said more than 40,000 Cubans had entered Ecuador since the country stopped requiring visas in 2008. But diplomats told the crowd by loudspeaker that they would have to apply for a visa via a government website.
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So many Cubans have been passing through Central America in recent weeks that their presence touched off a border conflict between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
It did not take long for Cubans to figure out that getting to the United States through Ecuador was a lot better than getting there on a raft.
“I used to fly to Ecuador several times a year to buy clothes to sell in Cuba”.
Since Havana and Washington announced a thawing of diplomatic relations last December, a flood tide of Cubans has left the island in an desperate attempt to make it to US soil before improving ties bring an end to the Cuban Adjustment Act. The migrants move from country to country, often guided by people traffickers.
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From the early hours Friday, citizens arrived at the embassy, which was surrounded by a police cordon, to demand answers about the new measure adopted by the Quito government amid a migratory crisis of more than 3,000 Cubans stranded on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. “We are supposed to receive instructions on Monday”, said a Tame office worker in Havana who declined to give her name. Ecuador, another Cuban ally, said Thursday that it was committed to what it called efforts by the Latin American community to prevent migration without authorization. “All I want is my money back, because I see that I’m going to lose it thanks to a bad decision by Ecuador”, said Fernando Corona, who noted that they should have announced this change “at least a month in advance”.
