One of the few consolations of Carlos (fictitious name), who left last year for Nicaragua, to the desperate like so many other cubans for seeking a better life in the United States, is that at least now her children and nephews, who remained on the island, can have decent toys for birthdays or Christmas.
Carlos buys them in a department store in Miami, at the good prices that free market competition allows, and sends them to Cuba through an agency. In his case, he Send with Faith, located in Hialeah. With them, he has also sent remittances to his family.
I hadn’t had any problems. In these months in the US, he has sent, for example, probes for his father (sick with cancer in Havana), gloves for his mother, seasonings and coffee for his wife, a robot for his eldest son, a stuffed unicorn for his little daughter… On one occasion, he even sent a remote-controlled helicopter for the child’s birthday. Just 20 centimeters long, the object was light, barely weighing 150 grams.
The problem arose when sending, for Reyes, another equal one for his stepson. When inspecting the shipment, as they usually do in this type of agency, he was first disappointed. “To begin with, this time they wanted to charge me a fees [una cuota extra] by the helicopter”, Carlos tells this newspaper, who explains that he reminded the employee who attended him: “How are they going to charge me fee, I already sent a helicopter with you the other time and I didn’t have to pay.” After alleging that she was sending a large package, and even $300 in remittances, the girl kindly agreed not to charge her the fee.
The explanation they gave Carlos is that “the entry ban on drones now applies to anything that flies a bit and has a remote control.”
Days later, he received another surprise: “The day the package was scheduled to arrive, the agency called me to inform me that the helicopter had been seized at Cuban Customs.”
The explanation they gave Carlos is that “the entry ban on drones now applies to anything that flies a bit and has a remote control.” Indeed, in June 2021the Cuban Government issued a law regulating “unmanned aircraft”, with the intention of restricting the use of drones for purposes of model airplanes or specific aerial work and always under the guardianship of a state entity.
Carlos does not understand how, on the one hand, the first helicopter did pass and, on the other, how that rule can affect a simple toy of little more than 20 dollars, “that only flies for seven minutes per charge, a very short distance already very low height.”
Less than him, his stepson understood, who spent days crying. “It seems to me a huge lack of respect!” Carlos denounces.
The agency only had an answer for the first question: simply the other time they did not open the suitcase of the man with whom they sent things. “These types of agencies work with mules”, Carlos explains. “The mule sells their pounds to the agency and the agency resells them to the client for $7 a pound for medicine, food and cleaning and $9 for the rest”.
When the man delivered the rest of the package to the family, he allowed himself to mistreat them: “Tremendous mess they made me at Customs because of the helicopter, I never bring anything that flies again!”
“The agents told him that he was equipped with cameras and was a ‘coast guard’ and not only did they not return the helicopter to the man, but they put a ‘warning’ on him”
Carlos had the consolation that when he returned the mule, the helicopter would be returned to him through Customs, and one day, when his family joined him in Miami, his stepson would finally have it in his hands. It was not like that: “The agents told him that he was equipped with cameras and was a ‘coast guard’ and not only did they not return the helicopter to the man, but they put a warning [una alerta] and it is marked from now on.” That is, every time you go to Cuba, they will open your suitcase to check your luggage.
Even then, the young employee who had attended him offered him hope: “The girl asked me for the purchase receipt, so when the man returns he can show it there at Customs, to see if they return the helicopter and withdraw the warning” . He was not very optimistic: “I don’t know why, but it seems to me that this toy already has an owner in Cuba.”
There was still one last episode, weeks later, with the owner of the agency, who called him a few days ago, rudely, to tell him that she had fired the employee.
“For a moment I thought that he had returned to Cuba and was talking to an ETECSA employee, who thinks that you are a servant instead of a client,” says Carlos, who expressed his surprise at having fired the girl. “That’s my problem, not yours!” the lady yelled at him.
In the midst of the bad words and untimely treatment, Carlos learned what really happened at Customs: “The woman told me that the man at Customs, when he went to pick up the helicopter back, was asked for money, a tax in dollars , but he refused to pay for it, and that’s when they came out with the fact that the helicopter had lights and a camera and was a coast guard.” Definitively, the innocent toy had found an owner other than his stepson, who still angrily remembers the gift from Reyes that he did not receive.
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