cubaninsider: Miami to Havana

3.4.16

Miami to Havana

Obama Unites The Two Cities
{Monday, April 4th, 2016}

Miami residents have always known the direction to Havana across the Florida Straits. But now, for the first time since the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in the 1950s, President Obama's detente is beginning to connect the two cities in a business sense, which has been his prime normalization priority all along.

Photo credit: South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

International Port Corporation of Miami has become the first American company to officially open an office in Havana. Larry Nussbaum, the IPC President, says his cargo business has six Cuban employees working at the newly opened Havana office. Nussbaum says, "The opportunities are great. Cuba is open for business." Mr. Nussbaum is well-schooled in the intricate, arcane laws that support the longstanding U. S. embargo against Cuba. He is also well-versed in the strident regulations of the United States Treasury Department, which oversees and directs the Cuban embargo via its Office of Foreign Asset Control.

This is a cargo ship owned by Miami's IPC arriving in Havana.

International Port Corporation of Miami and American Cruise Ferries of Puerto Rico have gotten approval from the United States to offer the first ferry services from Florida to Cuba in over five decades.

Ships from Tampa, Port Everglades, Miami and Key West will trek to Havana.

Florida is getting much closer to Cuba, by sea and air.

There have been no commercial airline flights from the U. S. to Cuba in half-a-century, only less convenient and more cumbersome charter flights. But the Obama administration and Cuba have agreed to a whopping 120 daily commercial flights from the U. S. to ten different Cuban international airports. American Airlines has requested authority to operate 12 daily flights to Havana plus two weekly flights to other Cuban cities. Delta, United, Jet Blue and Southwest airlines have also made requests. American Airlines plans to fly from Miami and 4 of its other hubs, including Charlotte, N. C. and Fort Worth, Texas.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts, a worldwide power regarding hotels and resorts, has become the first U. S. company to sign a deal with Cuba in more than half-a-century. Starwood, -- which is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut -- will market and manage two properties in Havana and it has signed a letter-of-intent to operate a third.

This is a future Starwood 5-star hotel in Havana.

Tilman Fertitta is a multi-billionaire American businessman who lives in Houston, Texas. He was born in Galveston, Texas 58-years-ago, shortly after his parents emigrated from Sicily. This week Fertitta starts his own program -- entitled "Billion Dollar Buyer" -- on CNBC, cable TV's most powerful business network. Mr. Fertitta strongly advises American businesses not to invest in Cuba, putting him in a powerful imperialist or revengeful minority that advocates waiting until the United States once again dominates Cuba.

Meanwhile, Cuba prefers its hard-earned independence.

Sharon Robinson is the daughter of baseball and Civil Rights legend Jackie Robinson. Yesterday -- April 3rd -- Sharon wrote a long article to herald the opening of another Major League baseball season. You can read it in its entirety on the whitehouse.com website. She is still emotional that President Obama included her and her 93-year-old mother Rachel, the beloved widow of Jackie Robinson, aboard Air Force One for the historic presidential trip to Cuba last month. Sharon and her mother, as they watched the Tampa Bay Rays play a Cuban national team at Havana's Latin American Stadium, were aware that Jackie Robinson in 1947 played on that very field. Sharon Robinson, now 66-years-old, yesterday wrote:

"At the time in 1947, Dad was a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers' farm team, the Montreal Royals. Branch Ricky arranged for him to fly to Cuba for an exhibition game, just a couple of months before he broke down baseball's color barrier in the United States. To me, this connection to my father almost brought me to tears. I was watching a baseball game in the same stadium nearly seventy years later -- and during an historic era. I wasn't in Havana in 1947, but it was my great fortune to be there in March of 2016 -- witnessing the early stages toward normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba. As I watched President Obama and my mother embrace, I was overcome with gratitude and pride for the President, the people of Cuba, Major League Baseball, and the unifying game of baseball."

Rachel married Jackie Robinson in 1946, the year before he played that game in Cuba and just before he broke the color barrier in the Major Leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Jackie, weakened by diabetes, died of a heart attack in 1972. His three children with Rachel are shown above -- upfront is David, with Sharon in the middle, and the oldest Jackie Robinson Jr. sitting next to his mother. Jackie Jr. died in a car wreck in 1971, less than a year before his father Jackie died. Rachel is now 93 and lives in Los Angeles.