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.