Traveling to Cuba, as a Cuban

Traveling to Cuba, as a Cuban
by Achy Obejas | Jul. 08, 2011

If things had gone according to plan, I'd be writing this from Havana,
the first of what I hoped – and maybe still hope, I'm not sure now –
would be a brief series of blogs from the city in which I was born.

But instead I'm writing from a dreary non-beach hotel in Cancun, Mexico,
listening to the rain come down like a machine gun on the roof. The
streets are inundated from the avalanche of water, a fact I discovered
on my little jaunt downtown to the Cuban consulate.

See, supposedly, as a Cuban citizen with a duly recognized Cuban
passport, a trip to Cuba shouldn't be much of a trial. Sure, Cubans –
like most Latin Americans – love a good bureaucracy, but between my own
resigned experience and most of the bureaucrats' own growing experience,
it's been getting better.

Normally, I travel to Cuba via Jamaica, on what I now think of as a
great airline, Air Jamaica. I recall they used to have a champagne
breakfast en route to Havana. But I digress … the poor suckers went
bankrupt and got reorganized and, in the process, friends recommended
the Cuba Network. It's basically a German travel agent that administers
business for Cubana de Aviación, the Cuban national airline.

Normally, I try to avoid Cubana. Not very supportive, I know, but I once
flew Havana to Santiago on Cubana on an old Soviet-era transport that
scared the devil out of me. Besides the fact that the flies buzzing
around seemed to defy the laws governing air pressure, the seats were
worn down to their metal skeletons, and the noise that came from the
engines seemed to suggest an emergency landing … well, almost any
minute. My fear's not rational, but that's the way it is. It's not just
me though: In Cuba, the airline is actually referred to as "La
Milagrosa," the miraculous one.

Anyway, when I finally emerged out of customs in Cancun yesterday – a
mind numbing 2 hours after arrival because the Mexican customs computers
were down off and on – I made my way over to the Cubana counter where I
was promptly informed I didn't have the proper documentation.

You may wonder what that is. See, in most countries, citizens can breeze
in and out with a passport. And I have that. In fact, it's good until
March 12 of next year. I also have a nifty little sticker on my Cuban
passport called the "rehabilatación," a unique Cuban permit that allows
certain citizens to go in and out of the island without having to ask
permission each time.

Yeah, Cubans need to ask permission of Cuba to both come and go from
their own country. Not just me or other Cubans living abroad. Everybody.
If you don't get the permit as a rehabilitación, you have to get an
individual travel waiver each and every time you travel, in and out of
Cuba. (It's like getting a visa to your own country as well as to the
country you're going to.)

But there's one other little thing, called a "prórroga." If you look it
up, it means deferment or some such thing. You may wonder what, exactly,
is being deferred. But your passport, which is good for 6 years, and
your rehabilitación, which runs concurrently, are worthless without a
prórroga, which is only good for two years at a time.

Needless to say, the passport has a fee, the rehabilitación has a
separate fee, and the prórroga has a separate fee. Never mind that they
all work together.

So when I arrived yesterday, all was good except my prórroga but I
wasn't worried. I'd travelled through Jamaica dozens of times with the
same situation and simply gotten my prórroga renewed in Cuba. No such
luck here.

After various attempts to get on the plane via a variety of exemptions
(the consulate here was closed already), I ended up staying the night in
Cancun. First order of business had been to change my flight via email,
since every single Cubana rep at the airport vanished the minute my
flight took off.

This morning, it looked pretty good. The rep in Havana dealt with the
guy in Germany and emailed that all was settled. I was then at the
consulate, enduring a cretin from Italy who kept pointing at the
portrait of José Martí and asking me if that was Camilo Cienfuegos, one
of the revolution's early heroes, then asking if the guy next to Fidel
in another picture was Camilo (it was Che), and also, by the way, Cuban
women … they're really something, aren't they?

Finally, I paid $1,400 Mexican pesos for the prórroga which, as it turns
out, is retroactive, so only good until March 12. Meaning that, if this
trip doesn't work out, it'll have been a complete waste of time and money.

What happened? Well, while I was dealing with the Italian, an email came
in from Havana. The Cubana girl in Havana said someone had cancelled my
flight yesterday, including my return. And that I needed to confirm that
I wanted to fly today. I emailed back that, yes, that was the plan. Two
seconds later, she wrote that it didn't matter because they couldn't
release a flight to without a flight back from Cuba. Oh, and Cubana here
in Cancun is closed. It should be open, yes, but it's not.

I'm headed to the airport now to see what happens. I may write again
from Havana on Monday, if I'm lucky, or maybe back from Chicago. I'll
let you know.

http://www.wbez.org/blog/achy-obejas/2011-07-08/traveling-cuba-cuban-88892