LA CRUZ, Guanacaste – Cuban migrants aiming for a new life in the United States but stranded in Costa Rica by a Nicaragua border firmly closed to them expressed mounting anger and desperation on Thursday.
Foreign Ministers of Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Cuba and member states of the Central American Integration System are scheduled to meet on Nov. 24 to discuss a “humanitarian corridor” proposed by Costa Rica, along with other possible solutions to the influx of Cuban migrants traveling illegally through the isthmus.
By Thursday morning, more than a thousand Cuban migrants had been rounded up in Paso Canoas after crossing the border from Panama. Another 100 milled about outside Costa Rica’s Immigration Administration north of the capital, hoping for papers authorizing them to continue on to Nicaragua.
The Americas' only one-party, communist-ruled state is the lone country in Latin America that has no political dialogue with the EU. It was suspended in 2003 after Havana rounded up and jailed 75 dissidents.
Alan Gross, the U.S. government contractor who has been imprisoned in Cuba for more than four years, began a hunger strike last week to protest his treatment by both the Cuban and U.S. governments, his lawyer said Tuesday.
