CURITIBA, Brazil -- As the morning fog rises above the pine trees and pink cherry blossoms in the biggest park of this city in southern Brazil, raucous laughter and Spanish expletives ring through the air.
One of Cuba's top baseball players has just driven in a run.
Curitiba, one of Brazil's most prosperous and orderly -- some would say boring -- cities, has become an unlikely outpost of the Cuban diaspora as tougher U.S. immigration policies coupled with the Trump administration's squeeze on the island's Communist government force many to build new lives farther south.
"We had no choice to leave Cuba, we couldn't take it anymore," said Jorge Ruiz, a professional baseball player from Havana who emigrated eight months ago and recently joined Curitiba's Latinos team. "There was no electricity, not enough food...you'd be lucky to eat meat once a month."
For decades, Cubans fleeing their homeland overwhelmingly headed north on rafts to Florida or flew to visa-friendly countries such as Nicaragua or Ecuador before making the long trek to the U.S.-Mexico border to cross into the U.S.
Now, Brazil has become one of the world's top destinations for Cubans seeking refuge.
Brazil received a record 44,381 asylum applications from Cubans last year, more than any other country in Latin America and double from the previous year, according to CEDA, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks Cuban migration. More than 200,000 Cubans filed for asylum in the U.S. last year as Washington shut down other legal pathways into the country, but few were successful, according to CEDA.
For the first time, Cuban asylum applications in Brazil exceeded those from Venezuelans, another migrant community that has grown rapidly in this city of nearly two million people, long shaped by the fair-haired descendants of European immigrants.
It is a result of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown that shut the southern border and made winning asylum cases much more difficult.
Instead of going to the U.S., many Cubans are charting an unexpected new course -- flying to remote Guyana. Located on South America's shoulder, it is one of the few countries they can reach without a visa.
Many then pay several thousand dollars to smugglers known as coyotes who take them on a grueling journey across the Brazilian border deep in the Amazon rainforest. From there, they ride a bus up to 3,000 miles to Portuguese-speaking Brazil and its huge southern cities where there are ample jobs.
Some describe being threatened with machetes, sleeping on the jungle floor and wading through caiman-infested waters. Few regret it. Brazilian authorities meanwhile have stepped up efforts to combat the crossings, but policing the remote frontier is extremely difficult, with smugglers using unofficial river crossings and jungle trails to evade authorities.
Baseball and softball leagues now compete for space with soccer in Curitiba's parks, couples dance Cuba's cha-cha in local bars and Cuban workers fill Curitiba's construction sites and kitchens. Curitiba is the new Miami, locals boast.
Cubans are fleeing their homes as conditions on the island become desperate under U.S. pressure, including an oil blockade. Trappings of modern life are disappearing, with routine power outages leaving many Cubans without running water or refrigeration. More than a million Cubans, a 10th of the population, have left the island since 2021, Cuban officials say.
Even the country's athletes -- once prized showcases of national prowess and beneficiaries of government support -- are struggling to survive, said Yesenia Kindelán, a Cuban national judo champion and the wife of the baseball player, Jorge Ruiz. After watching a competitor faint from hunger during a fight, she said, she insisted it was time to leave. Since moving to Brazil, the couple has gained more than 70 pounds between them.
In previous years, Ruiz and Kindelán said they would have headed for the U.S., where Cubans have long enjoyed a fast-track to a green card. But permanent residency has become a mirage since the Trump administration shut down legal entry programs and tightened enforcement.
Cuban migrants in Curitiba recount horror stories of friends and relatives who sold their homes to reach the U.S., only to be deported and returned to the island with nothing. The fear has become so pervasive that it is reshaping the Cuban national psyche, opening migrants' minds to possibilities beyond Florida, said Jorge Duany, former director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.
"From the Cuban perspective, South America was never a place to go," Duany said. "That may be changing."
Brazil is no stranger to Cubans. It had already welcomed thousands of doctors from the island under temporary government programs launched just over a decade ago.
This time it is different: Cubans are here to stay.
Rolando Tamayo, the owner of a newly opened Cuban bar just south of downtown Curitiba, said he had never imagined leaving home until he took a job as a manager of Havana's luxurious Hotel Nacional. His parents both worked for the government and his father, a member of the security services, had always been a staunch defender of the Communist regime.
But Tamayo grew disillusioned as he spent his workdays serving lavish dishes of prawns and beef to the political elite, including then-Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and relatives of Fidel Castro.
"I saw so many officials going out to eat good food with their families while the Cuban people went hungry," he said.
Brazil was only meant to be a temporary refuge when Tamayo arrived seven years ago, as his brother in Las Vegas tried to get him a job in the U.S. But it took so long to get the paperwork to move north that he had already fallen in love with a Brazilian and decided to stay.
For many Cubans here, settling in Brazil has proved easier than expected. Rice and beans are as much a staple as back home, and migrants say they encounter less prejudice than relatives in the U.S.
Brazil's slower pace of life also appeals to migrants such as Rogelio Naranjo, who works in a Cuban barbershop on the grubbier outskirts of Curitiba. "I have a Cuban friend who's in Miami, he's a barber, and he tells me, 'Man, I've got a car, I've got everything, but I don't have time to enjoy any of it.'"
Learning Portuguese has often been a struggle for Cuban émigrés. But with low unemployment easing concerns about Cubans taking jobs, Brazilians are largely accepting of the new migrants. And many Cubans say they have no plans to return home.
Elena González, a 22-year-old Cuban fashion student in Curitiba, says she wouldn't go back even if U.S. pressure forces change.
"It's going to take years for the country to get back on its feet," she said.
With more than 300,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts videos about life in Brazil, she iss now planning to start her own fashion brand.
Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 13, 2026 22:00 ET (02:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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