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Cubans on the Border: 'I Don't Want to Stay in Mexico Because the Government Is a Friend of the Castro Regime' (Spanish)

September 09, 2019 | El Nuevo Herald
By
Mario J. Pentón
Clockwise from left to right: Mairen Barbara Almora, Abel Aguilar Almora (21 years old), Abel Aguilar Columbie, Sergio Almora (9 years old), pose for a photo by the Rio Grande on the Mexican side of the border. Image by Jose A. Iglesias. Mexico, 2019.

Clockwise from left to right: Mairen Barbara Almora, Abel Aguilar Almora (21 years old), Abel Aguilar Columbie, Sergio Almora (9 years old), pose for a photo by the Rio Grande on the Mexican side of the border. Image by Jose A. Iglesias. Mexico, 2019.

Mairén Bárbara Almora abandoned her profession as a nurse when she was pressured to go to Venezuela as an "internationalist."

Since then, she was an insurance agent, a saleswoman of party supplies and a photographer. All to never depend more on a state salary or have to defend "an ideology" in which she does not believe. However, in Cuba, the government spies on those who seek to prosper, Almora said.

“I had no choice but to leave my country. Every day I had an inspector waiting at the door of the house. Fines, police records, seizures, threats ... Or I would go or end up in a prison,” she said in a recent interview in the city of Matamoros, in northern Mexico.

Read the full story in Spanish on the El Nuevo Herald website.