Costa Rica and Panama face continuing Cuban migrant crisis

AS THE CUBAN  migrant crisis continues to build,  affecting thousands who are stranded in Panama and Costa Rica, the president of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solis, headed for Cuba   on Sunday, December 13.

His visit to  Havana will be dominated by the crisis that erupted last month when up to 6,000 Cubans who tried to reach the United States were stranded on Costa Rican soil.
Solis confirmed that the “issue is on the agenda” when he meets Raul Castro, on Tuesday.
Without elaborating on what he expects to discuss with Castro, the Central American leader said his two-day visit will help to strengthen the process of diplomatic normalization reports the AFP news agency.
We aim to “finalize  the process of normalization of our relations, which since the nineties has been moving  progressively,” Solis said at Jose Marti airport.
Costa Rica re-established relations with Cuba in 2003 at the consular level, and in 2009 diplomatic relations were fully resumed.
The two governments had planned this presidential meeting in Havana before the emergence of the migration crisis.
The Solis visit was  initially aimed at expanding  bilateral business portfolio, but the lack of solution to the plight of Cubans confined in Costa Rica ended up becoming the focus.
Thousands of  Cubans were stranded in the country without being able to continue their journey by land to the United States since  Nicaragua blocked their way through their territory on  November 15.
Costa Rican authorities have had to improvise shelters in schools, gymnasiums, churches and community halls in the north to accommodate islanders waiting for an exit to continue their journey.
The efforts of Costa Rica with Guatemala and Belize to transfer by plane to any of those countries were frustrated by the refusal to allow their passage, while Mexico has said it would accept them only if they entered by land.
San Jose has said the Cuban crisis exposed serious deficiencies in the Central American integration because countries like Nicaragua, Guatemala and Belize have refused to help in solving the problem.
The foreign ministers of Central America met with those of Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Cuba, on November 24,  in El Salvador in search of an solution but the meeting failed when Nicaragua insisted on  blocking their passage. Panama is trying to cope with some 1,500 stranded Cubans.