Cubans on Medical Aid Mission Flee Venezuela, but Find Limbo

Dennys Morales, 23, left, a Cuban social worker who was assigned to Guyana, and Yovany Ciero, 29, a sports trainer and fellow Cuban who worked in Venezuela, defected and now live in Bogota, Colombia. (Photos By Alejandra Devengoechea For The Washington Post)

The Bush administration, which has tried to further isolate Cuba and provided tacit support for a failed coup against Chávez in 2002, has tried to encourage more defections. In August, U.S. officials announced a new policy that allows Cuban medical personnel -- identified by the Department of Homeland Security as doctors, physical therapists, lab technicians, nurses, sports trainers and others -- to apply for entry to the United States at U.S. embassies in the countries where they serve. Worldwide, as many as 500 Cuban medical personnel and their dependents have applied, Carbonell said. About a third have been accepted.

Although a Homeland Security fact sheet on the new policy, the Cuban Medical Professional Parole program, said adjudication of requests for entry to the United States "may take two weeks or longer," some of the medical personnel in Bogota have been waiting months. Several have been rejected after undergoing extensive U.S. background checks meant to weed out, among others, suspected spies.

"I don't know if it's going to come out," said one doctor, Cesar Rodriguez, speaking of his request to reside in the United States. "The embassy doesn't tell you anything."

Rarely are defections made public. Embassies in Latin America that receive requests keep quiet to protect the asylum-seekers and not fuel the indignation of the host government. Still, details seep out -- such as an internal U.N. report in 2003 that said 100 Cubans were trying to seek asylum at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.

"It's common, but no one ever sees it or knows about it," said Nora Garcia, 46, an orthodontist who is among those who defected to Bogota. "You don't talk about desertions."

Yovany Ciero, 29, a sports trainer who is among those who defected to Colombia, said he planned to abandon his post from the moment he was told he was going to Venezuela.

In Tachira state, on the border with Colombia, he lived in a house with seven other Cubans, working 10 hours a day, seven days a week, he said. "I felt like merchandise, to be exchanged for petroleum," he said. "It's a situation where you're not valued as a professional, you don't get a dignified salary."

Ciero said his life was suffocatingly routine. Politics, and his view of Cuba's government, were off-limits in his daily dealings with Venezuelans. "You cannot talk about the Cuban reality with anyone," he said.

In September 2005, after five months in Venezuela, he crossed the border into Colombia. But Ciero said his dreams are unfulfilled. American officials have denied his request for entry into the United States.

"Where do I go?" he said, sitting in a cafe in an elegant district of Bogota with two other Cubans. "What door do I knock on?"

The Cubans in Colombia have come to understand the cold realities of geopolitics -- that, though Colombia's government is conservative and close to the Bush administration, it also places a priority on maintaining cordial relations with Cuba and Venezuela.

International relations, though, were the last thing on Ariel Perez's mind when he, Jorge Mulet, 29, a physical therapist, and Jorge Antonio Fong, 35, a physician, asked authorities for permission to leave the small town where they were assigned and go shopping in Caracas. Instead, they bought bus tickets to the Colombian border.

There were doubts, Perez recalled. "You think, do you want to do it? Do we go back?" But once they crossed into Colombia, he said, there was no turning back.

Now, Perez lives with Mulet and Garcia, the orthodontist, in a small, two-bedroom apartment in a working-class neighborhood. The furnishings are on loan. Their clothes were donated by relief agencies or mailed by Cuban exile relatives in the United States. Perez spends his days volunteering at a nearby public hospital.

But he and the others say their patience is wearing thin. Garcia, whose husband is in the United States, said she dreams of the day she can leave.

"I want the freedom to work, freedom to say what I think politically," she said. "I want to decide for myself what I want to do for myself. That no one decides for me."