For two and a half days, Cuban journalist José Luis Tan walked through mud, mountains, rivers, and an unforgiving jungle. Every step, under the relentless rain of the Darién Gap—an inhospitable 160-kilometer stretch of rainforest that separates Colombia from Panama—was a cruel reminder: he was fleeing a dictatorship that would rather see him dead than free.
“The Cuban regime is so cruel and inhumane that they do not care if you die. For them, it is a joy,” Tan told LatAm Journalism Review (LJR). “Before I left, I told a friend, ‘If anything happens to me on this journey, in the jungle or wherever I may be, it’s the Cuban dictatorship’s fault.’ They are the ones truly responsible for forcing people to risk their lives.”
Tan, known in Cuba for his outspoken criticism of the regime, found himself on a path that multitudes of migrants have taken in an attempt to reach the United States. But it’s a path relatively few Cubans—who can legally fly to Nicaragua—and even fewer journalists have taken and documented firsthand.
After a failed attempt to escape to Nicaragua, journalist José Luis Tan took a flight to Guyana in December 2024. (Photo: Courtesy of José Luis Tan)
Tan worked for outlets such as Cubanet, Yucabyte, and Diario de Cuba, but in recent years had gained more visibility for his critical social media posts about the Cuban government. He also ran a grassroots aid network in his home province of Camagüey, helping children, the elderly, and the sick. “People forgotten by the regime,” he said.
Those activities were enough to make him a target of the Cuban State Security Department. For months, he endured interrogations, threats, surveillance, and acts of vandalism at his home. When his mother and younger brother began to be harassed as well, he said he knew it was time to leave.
Tan set a goal of reaching the United States to request political asylum, but he didn’t know he’d face an extreme journey to do so.
On December 25, 2024, he attempted to travel to Nicaragua, but at the Havana airport he was told, with no explanation, that he was not authorized to enter the country. Tan believes the Cuban regime was behind the restriction imposed by Nicaraguan authorities, he said.
A few days later, thanks to a social media follower who bought him a ticket, Tan was able to leave for Guyana—the only other mainland country in the Americas where Cubans can enter without a visa. After being stripped and searched before boarding, a Cuban government official at the Havana airport gave him a farewell message: “If you come back, you’re going to jail.”
He lived in the capital of Georgetown in hiding for three months, under surveillance and threats. Despite being nearly 3,000 kilometers from Cuba, Tan said he continued receiving intimidating messages on social media. On one occasion, a man on a motorcycle rammed his vehicle toward him and struck his leg with the tire. A few days later, Tan said, he saw the same man on the motorcycle pass by his lodging two or three times. On another occasion, a man with a Cuban accent approached him after he got off public transportation and warned him to stay quiet, saying he knew where he lived.
Tan said he dismissed the idea that these were coincidences or isolated incidents. He was sure they were part of the same pattern of harassment he had faced in Cuba. “In Guyana, where there is a large Cuban presence, it is clear that State Security must have collaborators and operations in the country,” he wrote in a Facebook post after the incidents.
That was when Tan decided to take a route rarely chosen by Cubans: traveling overland through South America to Mexico, crossing the Darién gap. The number of Cubans taking this route has drastically decreased since 2022, when Nicaragua dropped its visa requirement for Cubans. Fewer than 600 Cubans crossed the Darién Gap in 2024, according to Panamanian immigration authorities. That’s compared, for example, to more than 300,000 Venezuelans.
With no better option, Tan contacted smugglers known as “coyotes” who organize such dangerous journeys.
He began in April, he said. From Guyana, he went to Brazil. From there, he crossed the Amazon rainforest by bus until he reached Bolivia. He then passed through Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. At the border with Panama, he joined a group of migrants. He does not recall all their nationalities, but he remembers there were many Venezuelans and Indians. Together, they entered the rain forest.
“The hills are very difficult,” he said. “The trails on the hills are tiny little paths, and when you look down, there’s a cliff. So if you slip, you die.”
His clothes, soaked from the rain, eventually forced him to abandon all his belongings. Six weeks after leaving Guyana, Tan arrived in Mexico with only two T-shirts, two pairs of shorts, and one and a half pairs of underwear.
“I had to use half of one pair of underwear as toilet paper. So I ended up with just one pair, and I washed it and wore it wet,” he said.
Tan suffered damage to the skin and veins in his legs after crossing the jungle in shorts. (Photo: Courtesy of José Luis Tan)
The physical consequences of the trip were immediate: lymphangitis in one leg, allergic dermatitis, and extreme exhaustion. In the rainforest, he slept in makeshift camps. During the day’s hikes, he rested only in brief 20-minute breaks. His thirst and fatigue were stronger than his desire to eat the canned food he carried with him.
“I arrived with my dignity and courage intact,” he said. The dictatorship did not break me, and it will not break me.”
He arrived in Mexico City on May 28. He has made some friends and explored the capital, posting photos on social media of supermarket shelves fully stocked, contrasting them with the scarcity in Cuba. He said he plans to apply for refugee status with Mexico’s Commission for Refugee Assistance in order to settle legally in the country.
He remains determined to reach the United States, but plans to wait in Mexico to see how President Donald Trump’s immigration policies evolve and to evaluate his options for seeking protection.
In the meantime, Tan hopes to find work, whether in journalism or related to his other area of expertise: social media. He has also begun writing a book of stories about his experience—an act of protest, he said, so the world knows “how far the Cuban regime is willing to go.”
“The dictatorship made it hard, but not impossible,” he said. This journey “has given me more strength to keep reporting, and to keep fighting to free my people—my Cuba—from the inhuman, repressive, and bloody hands of the Cuban dictatorship.”
