If he had been able to choose, Roberto Hernandez Tello, 59, would have gone to the United States last May, when he left Cuba in search of a better life.
However, due to Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies, he ended up in Curitiba, in southern Brazil, 3,940 miles from his native Camagüey.
Thousands of his compatriots have arrived in Brazil this year, contributing to a shift in which, for the first time, more Cubans than Venezuelans are applying for asylum in Latin America’s largest country.
“I love Cuba, but with the crisis it’s impossible to live there now,” said Tello. “I have a 31-year-old son who lives in the US. But since Trump scrapped the parole, I chose to come to Brazil,” he added, referring to the US president’s elimination of the humanitarian programme known as CHNV, which had benefited migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
For years, Venezuela’s political and economic crises has driven people out of the country, creating a global diaspora of nearly 8 million. However, as of June this year, Brazil has had twice as many asylum requests from Cubans, 19,419, compared with Venezuelans, 9,850.
Cubans typically travel to Guyana or Suriname, countries with less bureaucratic visa processes, before crossing the land border into the northern Brazilian states of Roraima and Amapá.
But many are continuing their journey way down south, particularly to Curitiba – a city home to 1.8 million and the capital of Paraná state – which ranks just behind the northern entry-point towns in Cuban asylum requests.
The city has the highest GDP of the southern state capitals and is known for its strong public transportation, healthcare and education systems.
There are so many Cubans and Venezuelans in Curitiba that they’ve formed two leagues of softball, a sport virtually unknown in football-obsessed Brazil.
About 350 players, split across 16 teams, play the larger-ball, compact version of baseball on makeshift pitches of two parks in São José dos Pinhais, just outside Curitiba.
The catcher of one team, Ernesto Alberto Keiser Limonta, 30, arrived last year. He lives with his wife and is now focused on bringing the rest of the family to join them. “I chose Curitiba because I was told it’s a prosperous, safe city that has a lot of work,” he said.
Almost every Sunday, Limonta takes to the field in full uniform – cap, jersey bearing the flags of Cuba and Brazil, trousers, socks, and cleats without metal studs, to avoid injuries that could prevent someone from working the next day.
Given that the heavy influx of Venezuelans began earlier, they make up most of the players, but the roughly 20 Cubans have managed to form a dedicated Team Cuba.
“There’s a saying among migrants – and now it’s being repeated by Cubans – that our north is the south,” said one Venezuelan, Angel Blanco, 44, who founded one of the leagues.
The movement began last year when – according to the UN Refugee Agency – Brazil became the country with the highest number of Cubans applying for asylum (22,288 applications), ahead of Mexico (17,884) and the US (13,685). The figures could be even higher, as many Cubans struggle even to submit their requests.
Tello, for instance, has been seeking help from the humanitarian NGO José as he still has not been able to book an appointment with the federal police to formally register his request. Only with the protocol, which also serves as an ID, can migrants be officially hired by Brazilian employers.
Appointments must be booked online, and the next available slot wasn’t until November, Tello said. “I’m afraid I’ll run out of money – and if I do, I’ll end up sleeping on the streets. In this cold, I’d be dead within days,” he added, referring to the city’s climate, where temperatures can drop to 5C.
A federal police spokesperson said the gap was “due to high and growing demand” and that “ongoing efforts to expand capacity have not been enough to keep pace with the exponential number of migrants arriving in the region.”
Yaneth Corina Lara Garcia, a Venezuelan who works as an integration assistant at the non-profit organisation Cáritas Curitiba, said: “It’s six months in which, unable to get formal work, Cuban migrants end up vulnerable to exploitation – including modern slavery.”
Another common challenge for Cubans is having their university degrees recognised, which forces many into lower-paid jobs, such as construction or cooking.
Yarismeli Nardo, 36, a psychologist who has lived in Curitiba since 2019, is one of the few to have had her degree recognised. But it wasn’t easy, she says. The Federal University of Paraná opens just one application round per year, requiring a lengthy list of documents – often difficult to obtain in Cuba – as well as exams and interviews.
However, she persisted, and while working as a pharmacy sales assistant, Nardo completed the process. She now spends two days a week working as a psychologist at a clinic and the rest as an IT technician.
Now, six years after she left, Nardo is planning her first holiday back to Cuba.
“I want to save a little money, because my biggest wish is to see my grandmother, who’s 94,” she said. “When I first came here, I felt as if I was nobody – starting from scratch, where no one knew me. Now I feel as if I’m finally catching my breath.”
