At the beginning of this year, the death of Balto, a Cuban dog abandoned in Mexico by the person who had been hired to take him to the United States, made the news. After the abandonment, in a not very clear evolution of events, the animal would have been sacrificed “because it was depressed and did not want to eat,” according to a Mexican newspaper.
According to the source, the story had begun when Balto’s owner, a Cuban who had emigrated to the United States, hired the shipping agency of Osmany Benavides — also Cuban, living in Las Vegas — to take his dog from Cuba. The transfer would be carried out by a Mexican and would follow a route with stops at the airports of Mexico City and Tijuana, before ending in U.S. territory, where the dog would presumably enter as a Mexican pet.
This strategy is used by many migrants to bring the animals they had left on the island into the United States. In August 2023, a Mexican travel agent confessed to El Nuevo Herald that she assumed that dogs taken from Cuba to Mexico using tickets sold by her company “then continue on their way to the United States, [and] are never reported as dogs coming from Cuba, but from Mexico.”
According to U.S. authorities, Cuba is a country with a “high risk of transmission of canine rabies,” which is why animals intended to be transported from there must comply with a much stricter protocol than from other countries.
Unfortunately, in Balto’s case, the story ended tragically. According to its owner on Facebook, the little animal was abandoned at the airport in the Mexican capital at the end of December and until the beginning of January, there was no further news of it, when an animal protection group learned that it had been sacrificed.
Osmany Benavides was contacted by OnCuba to find out his version of the events, but until the publication of this note, he had not responded.
More pets at the airport
The emigration of affectionate animals has grown in Cuba in recent years. About 2,000 pets left the island during the first ten months of 2023. The figure represents double the number that had left the island in the same period of the previous year. Most of them traveled thanks to the efforts of their owners who, before leaving, had left them in the care of family or friends.
This is a phenomenon that has increased considerably in recent years, Dr. María Gloria Vidal, from the National Center for Animal Health (Cenasa), acknowledged during an interview with Reuters. The institution is in charge of legalizing the Animal Health Export Certificates, a document required for pets that leave the island; as well as supervising the work of veterinary clinics authorized to place identification microchips, apply vaccines, extract samples, and other requirements of the complicated process that owners follow to travel with their pets or reunite with them.
Requirements vary depending on the destination country and the species to be transported (dogs are subject to many more regulations than cats, for example); and its speed, from variables such as the money available to the interested parties and the city of Cuba in which they carry out the process.
The final phase — the transfer — occurs under circumstances as diverse as the cases in question: the animals can be reunited with their owners either after having traveled in the company of family or acquaintances, or in the care of one of the agencies that provide transit services between borders.
When leaving Cuba, pets follow different routes. Their main destinations are Spain and the United States, coinciding with the poles of attraction for its owners. A portion of those sent to the northern nation stops in Mexico, replicating to a certain extent the migratory route that thousands of Cubans have followed in recent years.
When the family leaves
Many stories often resemble that of Alicia, a woman from Ciego de Avila who traveled to Spain in 2019 thanks to a university scholarship. Her mother and her minor brother remained in Cuba, waiting for the “new Grandchildren Law” (Democratic Memory Law) that would allow them to apply for Spanish citizenship.
The COVID-19 pandemic and delays in the promulgation of the regulation postponed the reunion. It was not until mid-2023 that Alicia’s mother received her Spanish passport and she was able to begin the process of emigrating with her son. They had to decide what to do with the family’s Pekingese.
Its care and subsequent transfer to Spain was left to Alicia’s uncle in the city of Camagüey. One of the private clinics in Cuba that have the necessary accreditations for the process operates there.
“It is cumbersome for the animal’s caretaker because he has to take it twice to be vaccinated, to be dewormed, to have blood drawn…, but we are not talking about an expensive procedure. For example, the microchip and the rabies vaccine cost 2,500 pesos each. What costs the most is the shipping of the blood and the tests in the Valencia laboratory, for which you pay 100 euros. The rest that is needed, such as the thermos for the samples or the container, can be found on the Internet at a fairly good price,” noted the uncle in charge.
Those who do not have a way to purchase these items outside the country must search for them online in the island’s extensive resale market. Among the star products, thermoses from brands such as Tilcare or Disoncare stand out — originally intended for transporting insulin vials — which on Amazon can be found for between 20 and 25 dollars, and in Cuba, they are sold for double that price.
These containers are used to send samples to laboratories outside Cuba, an unavoidable step, since none of those in the country have the necessary degree of accreditation to endorse them. Shipments are made mainly to laboratories in Valencia (Spain) and Kansas (USA), which have traditionally been used the most by Cubans.
The sample crisis
Enterprises such as Traslados Pet Cadena Miranda offer a comprehensive pet transportation service — including blood tests and documentation — for rates ranging between $2,500 and $3,000 per animal, according to the area of the United States of final destination. In this country, according to the 2023 Census, 2.8 million Cuban Americans resided; of them, around a million were born in Cuba. Between October 2021 and October 2023, 464,197 Cubans would have arrived in the United States. In addition, Traslados Pet Cadena Miranda also sends pets to Mexico, which is usually a transit country for Cubans who will emigrate to the United States and is also a frequent migratory destination.
A Cuban resident in Louisville, Kentucky, where the island community is increasing, hired the services of this company to reunite with her dog. She assured OnCuba that the process was “quite quick and smooth. They took care of everything.”
The alternative, she lamented, was to “fall into the trap that has been formed with appointments [for blood draws] and all that. My mother, who is elderly, couldn’t face it and I couldn’t leave my job to go to Cuba to solve it for myself.”
In Havana, the number of people trying to take their dogs exceeds the capabilities of the Carlos III clinic, the only one in the capital endorsed by the National Center for Animal Health for blood extraction from pets that will leave the country. “If it could be done in several clinics, the guardians would resolve their immigration procedures more quickly,” a Havana veterinarian commented on condition of anonymity. Many users complain on social media about the difficulties in getting appointments.
The situation has reached the point that some recommend going to nearby provinces to do the tests. The problem does not affect cat owners because they do not need serology tests to leave the country; for felines, the microchip, the anti-rabies vaccine, and the certificate proving it are enough.
Many interests at stake
To solve the crisis, the administrator of Pet Immigration Procedures from Cuba to Spain proposed to Cenasa to increase the number of veterinarians authorized to collect and process samples, which would speed up the procedures, and reduce the possibilities of abuses and acts of corruption.
“If we had five clinics in Havana with this option, this stagnation would be avoided somewhat. I think it is time to talk to the Ministry of Agriculture to open other veterinary clinics that allow us to do the same. There are many veterinarians trained as well as their clinics to perform the extraction,” said animal rights activist Claudia Díaz in that group.
Any decision that facilitates the reunion of pets with their families could significantly contribute to reducing abandonments. “The reality is that it is almost impossible to relocate the animals that are left behind, and their fate is terrible,” warns the group Cubans in Defense of Animals, Ceda.
In a tutorial on the subject, the association reports extreme cases, such as those of owners who have come to pressure their activists by telling them that they have “a certain amount of days to find a home for the puppy or kitten, otherwise they leave it on the street.”
Options such as a dog hostel open in El Vedado for those who travel abroad and wish to leave their pets safe are only palliatives for a problem that will probably worsen as a consequence of the wave of migration in recent years. As soon as they settle in their new homes, many Cubans begin the process to claim their pets, increasing the tension in an already overwhelmed system; at least in Havana, where the largest number of procedures take place.
Authorizing more laboratories to extract samples and complete other procedures would be the answer to such a circumstance, but some of the people consulted for this note were pessimistic about it. “This is a business and no one wants to lose their share. Whenever there is money involved, things go wrong and then there is no way to straighten them out,” speculated Alicia’s uncle, who congratulates himself for having completed the procedures in Camagüey. There, Cenasa authorized a private clinic to carry out the process, which has allowed it to be more expeditious. “Although with the number of people who have left recently, we will soon know what things will be like,” he ventured.
After the departure of so many Cuban families, preparing the trip for their pets has become a full-time job for many entrepreneurs. One that is quite lucrative and that is expected to go further along.
Unfortunately, just as in human emigration, when it comes to changing lives, not all pets are the same, and some even end up abandoned on a street in Havana or — like Balto — in an airport in a strange country.
A palliative would be for the Cuban authorities to expand the number of clinics authorized to process these requests; another, that the accreditation of a Cuban laboratory for testing samples would be managed in countries like Spain. These would be conditions that would shorten the long and difficult period of separation between a pet and its human relatives.
Author
Amado Viera
