Posted on 07/13/2012 2:08:01 PM PDT by Lorianne
A small cargo ship sailed into Havana Bay on Friday with the first maritime shipment from Miami to Cuba in 50 years.
The Ana Cecilia carried just one container filled with food and other items, but it was the beginning of what shipper International Port Corp hopes will be a weekly service linking the United States and Cuba, longtime ideological foes.
There are other shipping services between the two countries, but none linking Miami, center of the Cuban exile community in the United States and opposition to Cuba's communist government, to Havana.
The company was granted a license by the U.S. government, which has imposed a trade embargo against Cuba since 1962.
The company is allowed to transport items that Washington considers humanitarian aid - among them food, medicine, appliances, furniture and clothes - from authorized groups and from family members. The ship has space for 16 containers and charges $5.99 per pound. The Ana Cecilia was supposed to arrive in Havana on Thursday, but had to sail through the sometimes rough seas of Cuba's customs bureaucracy before it could come to port.
It could face more problems in September, when stiff new import taxes take effect that could discourage people from shipping items to Cuba.
(Excerpt) Read more at in.reuters.com ...
$5.99 a pound and a box of cigars is more likely. Anyone seen Bubba down at the docks??
It’s about time. The cold war is over
So what happened to the embargo? O has to GO!
Castro said thanks, send another package to me next week.
Who else is it going to go to? Sheesh.
“Candygram for Castro.”
I have never understood why we chose not to invade Cuba and send Castro packing. If we did it today the Cubans, for the most part, would welcome us with open arms.
The missiles aimed at us, plus the nuclear weapons that the soviets threatened.
What the heck is the point of the embargo?? The Cold War ended how many years ago?! And we trade how much with communist China?
That puzzles me too.
The cold war is over and what is more WE WON.
It would seem to me that trade with Cuba would end that regime more quickly as the common people would soon see what they have been prevented from accessing.
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