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20.LA MULA COMO VACA DE LECHE (THE MULE AS CASH COW)

Even before the announcements of December 17, 2014, there were a number of weekly charter flights between Havana, Miami, and Tampa. A flight to and from New York existed on and off. These were used mainly by Cuban-Americans to maintain family ties. Since the December 17 breakthrough, the flights have multiplied quickly, and the trade they are used for has increased exponentially.

Summing up: an aunt or uncle visiting from Miami is now supposed to bring along a kind of standard package to fulfill the expectations resting on the successful emigrant. Judging from the enormous amounts of luggage coming off the flights, the average package contains a flat-screen TV, a computer, a Playstation, a mountain bike, and a microwave. The more demanding families will have asked for a Nespresso machine – cleverly creating the need for further visits to continue supplying the pods. The unavoidable next generation iPhones are probably carried as hand luggage, and you may safely bet that a few of the wheelchair passengers are faking a medical condition or a handicap in order to get the chair into the country duty-free.

Yet all this visible trade is still only the tip of the tropical iceberg. What’s mostly needed from Miami is cash, and lots of it is coming – anywhere from three to five billion dollars a year. This enters in part as remittances handled by Western Union, whose offices in Cuba can receive but not send money. Those official remittances were subject to quite narrow restrictions from the U.S. side until recently. You could send only a limited amount in any three-month period, only to proven family members, and only by doing extra paperwork at the U.S. Western Union pay windows – often to the annoyance of the employee and of those waiting in line behind you. Although those restrictions were next to impossible to really enforce, they created a thriving network of mulas bringing large wads of cash dollars, tens of thousands at a time.

With a cheap metaphor about an expensive habit, I would say that Havana has replaced the jinetera with the mula as her cash cow.