At Cuban Americans' mom-and-pop agency, travel business isn't moving
A Florida law requiring such businesses to post hefty bonds is on hold -- but fellow Cuban Americans hoping to visit family are afraid to buy tickets. Mario Romero says hard-liners don't understand.
HIALEAH, FLA. — All around Mario Romero's strip-mall travel agency, this immigrant neighborhood was alive with commercial traffic, all of it moving to a clave rhythm clunking from an outdoor speaker. In and out they went on a sunny Monday morning to the IGA food store, or the Gala hair salon, or La Epoca restaurant for a cafecito.
But few stopped in to see Romero. His business, Cojimar Express Services, is one of dozens of Miami-area agencies that hold federal licenses to sell plane tickets to Cuba. These days, he said, people are too scared to buy.
"There is no business," he said. "You don't see anybody in here."
Romero, who left the island in 1991, sat at his desk in a crisp linen shirt and stared at a row of empty chairs beneath his black-and-white photos of the Cuban countryside: The banks of the Rio Miel. The fishing boats at Pinar del Rio.
A woman appeared at the door, but not to buy a ticket. It was his wife, Marisela, with a plate of chicken and rice from home.
This slowdown, Romero said, was the result of yet another shift in regulations on this side of the Straits of Florida. A state law passed this summer requiring agencies like his to post bonds of as much as $250,000. The state would use the money to open investigations of companies suspected of skirting the rules governing travel to Cuba.
Romero is one of 13 agency owners who have filed a legal challenge to the law; they recently won a restraining order until a federal court decides its fate.
Nonetheless, he said, customers were spooked. They wondered whether the law presaged a government crackdown: Nobody wanted to fly to Cuba only to find that their travel company had been shut down. Nobody wanted to be stranded in Castrolandia.
"The customers are saying, 'If we pay our money, what's going to happen if there's a problem?' " he said.
To Romero, the new troubles were no surprise: For nearly half a century now, American lawmakers have been alternately loosening and tightening the regulatory spigot that controls the flow of U.S. visitors to the communist nation. That has made for a bumpy ride for entrepreneurs who have dared to make travel to Cuba their specialty, especially the mom-and-pop travel agencies that dot the working-class neighborhoods of greater Miami.
