Miami undertaker ships dead exiles back to Cuba

By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) - "Get my bones back to Cuba."

That's the last wish that Miami funeral director Rafaiy Alkhalifa says he has heard time and again from many of his "Cuba-bound" clients or their loved ones since 1994.

That's the year Alkhalifa and his Auxiliadora Funeraria Nacional funeral home first began shipping recently deceased Cuban exiles back across the Florida Straits to their final resting place in Cuba.

An exception to the otherwise tight U.S. trade embargo imposed on Cuba in 1962, the airborne burial business has been moving ahead steadily ever since, according to Alkhalifa, a 64-year-old native of Guyana.

"The gist of this whole thing is family first," Alkhalifa told Reuters in a recent interview, before presenting a gold-trimmed business card with a trifecta of toll free numbers including 1-800 FUNERAL, 1-800 CREMATION AND 1-888 INGRIEF.

"It's not about money. It's not about money at all."

Alkhalifa says he has been shipping between 12 and 20 late exiles by charter flight home to Cuba every month since U.S. and Cuban authorities made it the first U.S.-based funeral home with permission to transport cadavers between two countries long seen as implacable enemies.

The business is located just a few blocks north of Miami's Little Havana district, the traditional heartland of exile opposition to former Cuban President Fidel Castro since his revolution nearly 50 years ago.

Many older exiles among the 650,000 Cubans in Miami have vowed they would never return to the island until Castro and his younger brother President Raul Castro are out of power.

But Alkhalifa has seen how family and nationality or a sense of belonging can transcend politics when people face the ultimate decision about how best to deal with death.

"They want to go home because it's the fatherland," he said, speaking of one motive driving those dying exiles who chose to return to Cuba. "Motherland, fatherland, whatever you want to call it. These are things that are very important to people."

FAMILY REUNION

Additionally, he said many exiles had family members in Cuba who they hadn't seen for years, people who want to see them buried where the family can visit.

"It's reconciliation even in death," Alkhalifa said.

Money could be another motive for someone favoring a burial in Cuba over interment in Miami.