Cuba not accepting mail destined for the United States

[Judi Lynn]

Source: CNN

Cuba not accepting mail destined for the United States
From Shasta Darlington, CNN
January 21, 2011 4:36 p.m. EST

(CNN) -- Cuba on Friday suspended delivery of mail destined for the United States, saying the letters were being turned back because of anti-terrorist measures in the United States.

The U.S. Postal Service confirmed that there are "some issues" connected with the Transportation Security Administration that it said has caused mail to "accumulate."

The Postal Service is still accepting mail from Cuba, spokesman Dave Lewin said in a written statement. But as airlines that carry the Cuban mail "were attempting to meet the TSA requirements the mail piled up. Air carriers ran out of space and began returning mail to Cuba," he said.

There is no direct mail service between the two countries, so Cuba sends mail through Canada and Mexico.





Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/01/21/cuba.us.mail.suspended/index.html?hpt=T2

[dipsydoodle]

1. BBC News link

Postal service between the US and Cuba had been suspended for 42 years after Cuba's communist revolution, and only resumed in 2009 via third countries.

President Barack Obama's decision to renew the service was widely seen as a move towards repairing relations between the two countries.

Its suspension is likely to be interpreted as a setback to the president's efforts at easing tension and improving people-to-people ties between Cuba and the US.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12257412

Presumably mail still reaches Cuba in the opposite direction ? :shrug:

[trud]

2. the US not accepting mail from Cuba

would have been a more accurate headline.

[Tempest]

3. +1

[Judi Lynn]

4. They went to great lengths to avoid being direct, didn't they? Jeez. n/t

[ngant17]

5. Judy, I've received postal mail orginating from Cuba since 1989

occasionally from Radio Havana Cuba and but also from at least one good friend Susana who lives in Old Havana and works in the city. Never really cared how the mail finally arrived in my PO box in central Florida. It was certainly a treasure to get the magazines and letters, once Susana sent me a letter including an unmarked, pristine 65-centavo "Ernest Hemingway" stamp on the envelope, issued by the government on the centennial year of his birth (1999).

With email being more common now, I don't expect so much postal mail from Cuba now. But it seems silly and absurd that the state of Florida would have ever chose to divorce itself from its history with Cuba, especially as regards the famous writer and traveler Hemingway who was a bridge between the two adjacent geographical places (I refer to your previous post, about the 'terrorist clause' built into Fla. state law against Cuba. But what could I have expected when our poor state has been Republican-controlled for all these years?).

[Judi Lynn]

6. It's such a shame a faction in South Florida can command policy for the whole state, isn't it?

Unfortunately, they've always had friends in "high" places, since Preston Bush owned property in Cuba long before the Revolution, and the following Bushes have always been thick as thieves with the hardliner reactionary right-wingers from the Batista era. I'm sure you're well aware Jeb Bush appointed Fulgencio Batista's grandson to the Florida Supreme Court, Raoul Cantero, IIRC. They simply seem to control every aspect of Florida life, and it's so damned wrong.

Same people have controlled NATIONAL policy on Cuba, too, all these long, long years.

Since Florida is deciding to go its own way on Cuba apart from the national position, it may be e-mail will be all that's left you if you stay where you are!

Glad to hear you've not had trouble with mail from Cuba before now. I would hope and imagine that would also mean you have been completely secure in sending your own mail, and haven't had your letters opened and examined, contrary to what people used to claim about the Cuban government. So much propaganda has been spewed, and probably not 1% of it has ever been true.

[ngant17]

7. Florida and Cuba

Thank god I was able to get my treasured 1999 Hemingway stamp out from Cuba ten years ago, normal snail mail, thank you very much. Have they forgotten that dear Ernest was a part of Cuban history and (Key West) Florida history at the same time? Why would you want to just erase that, with a spiteful and hateful law? I don't think Susana will ever know just how much her 65-centavo stamp from Cuba means to me. And how such trivial things will probably no longer be possible thanks to that specific Fla. Repug law here.

Actually, as I recall my first RHC mail started coming during RayGun's first term, before the internet really got established, and I stayed a regular listener until I pretty much was diverting my attention away from shortwave broadcasts. The internet helped me a lot to make new friends in Cuba in new directions, and also friends with Cuban-Americans here in the states. Postal mail has always been a political target for some reason, but the Cuban government never has worried me. Terrorism originating from the USA against Cuba worries me.

On a federal level, I definitely know in the past that my local USPS has screwed with my mail via my local PO box. Brazenly and personally, but not necessarily confined to Cuban letters. Once many years ago, I remember a USPS worker wrote a nastly note on my sub to Peoples Daily World, that was probably a random act of hate, I kind of accepted that under RayGun, and now this cancer has spread, it's no stretch to believe that some of that officially-sanctioned ugliness and hate exists on every government level here in the US.

Hate is not the answer. Where's this Christian love that the rightwing is always embracing? We won't ever find it here on the state level now. I suppose NGOs in Florida will be the only way to act normal and civil with Cuba in the long run.

[bigworld]

8. How did mail get here before?

I too received stuff from Radio Habana Cuba throughout the 80s and 90s. How did they route the mail then, through another country?

[ngant17]

9. good question, I assume not by usual air mail

otherwise the standard postmarks would have been visible. My Hemingway stamp mentioned previously was never postmarked, not by Cuba or the US. It was affixed to a Cuban envelope, I think the paper was bagasse, not usual pulp like ours.

Everything concerning Cuba is abnormal for them, you know. Not so with the rest of the world. They could have used some special air transport thru US diplomatic channels, maybe Gitmo and their military command. Probably classified secret, like national security or something. Only the NSA knows for sure? Never really cared much about that process anyway.