Selling trips to Cuba once was deadly

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Monday, 05.04.09
Selling trips to Cuba once was deadly

Cuba travel agencies appear to have put their troubled past behind -- and business is booming thanks to the new relaxation of travel restrictions to Cuba. But it all began with a murder 30 years ago.

BY LUISA YANEZ, DOUGLAS HANKS AND LAURA FIGUEROA
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There was a time when advertising Viajes a Cuba on a storefront was an invitation to a pipe bombing.

In the politically charged Miami of the late 1970s and '80s, the FBI investigated more than a dozen blasts at Cuba travel agencies -- considered nests of Communist agents by staunch anti-Castro exiles.

Selling tickets to Havana could even get you killed. That's what happened to Carlos Muñiz Varela, a 26-year-old exile living in Puerto Rico who opened the first Cuba-approved travel agency. Thirty years ago this week, he was gunned down in San Juan.

But times have changed, and the travel agencies today worry little about political retribution.

''They want to call me a communist -- thank you very much,'' said a strident Francisco Aruca, the owner of Marazul Charters. Aruca, also a Miami radio host, is one of the more outspoken of the seven agency owners who book charters to Cuba. They all have permission from Cuba and the U.S. Treasury Department.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/story/1030958.html