From a Cuban Medical Mission in Venezuela to Limbo in Colombia
HAVANA TIMES – The car Manuel* was traveling in moved slowly at dawn along a muddy dirt track in the Venezuelan state of Táchira. Four passengers were crammed into the back seat, while the driver turned off the headlights every time he heard the sound of an engine in the distance. They had already passed several National Guard checkpoints on the road to San Antonio del Táchira, but “the most complicated controls” were still ahead, he recalls. “If they stop you, they search everything, take your documents, and send you back to Cuba with nothing,” he continues.
For more than a decade, Manuel had been part of the Cuban government’s medical mission in Venezuela. He arrived in the South American country at a time when collaborators were still “guaranteed a salary, food, and facilities to communicate with family.” Over the years, those benefits evaporated. The monetary reform implemented by the Cuban government in 2021 ultimately wiped out his savings: the 13,000 CUC (a currency equivalent to the same amount in dollars) he had in the bank were converted into 2,000 USD. “There was no one to complain to,” he says.
He decided to leave the mission when he turned 42. He knew that crossing the Simón Bolívar International Bridge (the main land route into Colombia) with an official passport—a type of document that identifies collaborators and members of official Cuban missions abroad—could cost him dearly. Manuel and his compatriots in Venezuela knew that from legal advisers from the mission operated in every state, connected to Cuban intelligence and the National Guard, ready to stop any attempt to flee.
That is why he chose the back road and the risk of extortion. He did not want to submit anymore to a system that, according to organizations such as Human Rights Watch, reproduces practices of modern slavery: confiscation of passports, bans on free assembly, constant surveillance, and the appropriation of up to 70% of the salaries paid by host countries. Along the way, Manuel thought that if he were caught, he would be treated as a deserter and would lose any chance of helping his parents in Cuba—two elderly retirees with very limited means to survive on their own.
In the Aguas Claras area, one of the most commonly used for informal crossings into Colombia, two uniformed men stopped the vehicle. They were dressed in military attire and wore armbands with the Colombian flag sewn onto their sleeves, along with rubber boots. “They asked us for four hundred dollars to let us continue. Otherwise, they would keep our papers,” Manuel said.
They paid the amount and arrived in Cúcuta, a Colombian city located right on the border with Venezuela. From there, Manuel took a bus that carried him to Bogota over sixteen hours. In his pocket he carried a crumpled piece of paper with a handwritten address. When he arrived at the terminal, he handed it to a taxi driver who dropped him off in front of a house in Ciudad Bolívar, in the south of the capital. He was received by a Cuban who rented out rooms. Manuel ended up staying with eight other people. Together they shared two bedrooms and one bathroom.
Colombia was not Manuel’s final destination. The plan was to fly to Mexico under the pretext of attending a conference, using the official passport. Although he managed to enter Mexican territory, Manuel was classified as a potential “migrant” and sent back to Bogota, with a measure that barred him from returning for six months.
Cubans in limbo: invisible migration
When Manuel arrived in Colombia in the spring of 2024, the country had become the main recipient of migration in Latin America, particularly of the Venezuelan exodus. However, New Migration Flows in the Americas, coordinated by the 4Métrica Foundation, indicates that the openness of Colombian authorities toward migration has been selective.
While the Venezuelan population had fairly swift normaliization pathways in the years after the pandemic, and mechanisms have been expanded for access to some basic services, Cuban migration has not had the same luck. This is explained by Nastassja Rojas Silva, the researcher in charge of the study in Colombia: the Colombian system assigns unequal reception conditions based on nationality rather than vulnerability.
Part of this difference lies in the fact that the Cuban population is significantly smaller in numerical terms and there is no certainty about how many currently reside in the country. The last National Census of 2018 recorded 4,383 people—a figure that is outdated and does not reflect the exodus following the social uprising of July 11, 2021, intensified by the economic and repressive crisis on the island. Between 2021 and 2024, more than 1.5 million people left Cuba; part of that flow—especially members of medical brigades—left via Venezuela and from there crossed into Colombia through irregular border crossings, often with the idea of continuing north to reach Mexico or the United States.
According to official data from Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, between 2012 and 2025 more than 85,000 Cubans entered the country through registered channels. Although it is most likely that their stated intentions upon entry corresponded to temporary stays—given that Colombia is not among the main migration destinations for Cubans—the worsening crisis on the island and the difficulties of continuing north may have influenced some to stay. The figure is another indication that the Cuban presence in Colombia has grown in recent years.
Arriving in Bogotá confirmed for Manuel the sense of limbo in which the Cuban community finds itself. In the house where he settled, there was barely space to sleep, and he soon discovered that without formal papers he could not rent a room under a contract; on top of that, housing listings commonly included the requirement “no foreigners.”
Rojas, a professor at the University of the Andes, sums it up this way: “It is very difficult to access rentals in Colombia. Many people end up living wherever they can, with difficulties accessing basic services.” She also warns about growing xenophobia and the legitimization of hate speech in public spaces, including the media.
Political asylum appeared to be the only pathway left to Manuel, aware that the process could take years and that in the meantime he would not have permission to work. “I’m grateful they let me stay, but if I can’t work formally, how do I pay rent or buy food?” he asks.
With no options to obtain legal residence in the short term, Manuel is outside the system. He cannot fully access financial services or public health care. In this regard, Rojas points out that the first right violated for migrants in Manuel’s situation is regularization of his status: “Regularization is not a sufficient condition, but it is necessary to guarantee a dignified life for migrants. It is the right that enables other rights.”
The Cuban people interviewed report systematic difficulties in accessing refugee status or a visa, despite having solid grounds to request international protection. One Cuban woman says: “I brought everything they asked for, but they denied it anyway. You don’t know what criteria they use. They tell you that you can appeal, but they never respond.”
According to the testimonies collected by the cited research, most Cubans in Colombia work in the informal sector, even when they have high professional qualifications. Doctors, physiotherapists, nurses, or teachers end up in precarious jobs, facing obstacles to validating their degrees and securing employment in the formal sector. The gap between training and job opportunities generates frustration and psychological strain.
“I’ve had good offers, but as soon as they ask about papers, everything ends,” says Manuel, who survives by offering in-home rehabilitation therapies paid in cash. When he is in front of a potential client, he does quick calculations and puts together discounted packages of physiotherapy sessions to get paid in advance. Another compatriot, trained as an electrician in Cuba, says: “Nobody hires you if you don’t have a visa. And if you do have a visa, they still tell you it doesn’t count, that they’d rather look for a Colombian. So you work day-to-day, without a contract.”
In peripheral neighborhoods of Bogotá, Medellín, or Barranquilla, many Cubans like Manuel share small rooms in subdivided houses without written contracts, leaving them in highly precarious conditions. One migrant interviewed described her room as “a windowless space, with leaks, but it was the only thing I could afford without papers.”
Rojas also notes that irregular migrants arrive with urgent needs, without material or financial resources, and in most cases “lack the documents for migration regularization,” which becomes a cycle of vulnerability that is very difficult to escape. Manuel sums it up this way: “Here I walk around calmly, I don’t feel watched like in Venezuela, but I also can’t make plans. It’s like always being on probation.”
Between settling down and waiting
Manuel knew almost nothing about Colombia before arriving. He knew of Bogotá, Medellín, or Barranquilla as names on a map, and little more. His clearest reference to the country was soccer matches and some international sporting events he had followed on television. Today he shares a room in the south of the capital with his wife—who also deserted the medical mission. “You have to be a migrant to know what it is to be a migrant. It’s not the same to be told what it’s like as it is to arrive in a place you don’t know,” he reflects.
His experience encapsulates the Cuban paradox: highly trained professionals forced to live in the shadows. He appreciates the hospitality but insists that minimal support could exist: “There should at least be some kind of food voucher. These are things that could be improved. I don’t see it as a demand, because in the end I can’t have rights here if I’m not a citizen. But it could be done.”
His account illustrates the tensions captured by the research: the perception of freedom and opportunity that Colombia offers versus the precariousness that marks the daily lives of those without documents or support networks. Most of the people interviewed in the study described a positive balance regarding access to basic services or informal employment, but one tempered by instability and vulnerability. Migrating, in Manuel’s words, “is like being born as an adult”: it means learning all at once how to fend for yourself in a strange place, dealing with uncertainty and, often, xenophobia.
The experts’ proposal is clear: Colombia needs to move from emergency responses to sustainable integration policies that recognize the diversity of migrant profiles and their contributions to national development. This entails guaranteeing equal access to housing, health care, employment, and financial services; strengthening an asylum system that is currently weakened; and designing integration policies that do not depend on nationality.
*The names of the migrants, as well as some details of their stories, were changed to protect their identity.
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This report is part of a multimedia series by the Más Voces Foundation and 4Métrica dedicated to disseminating the results of the study New Migration Flows in the Americas, which analyzes the migration of Cubans, Venezuelans, and Salvadorans to Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and the United States.
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.