STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
People around the world live in part on remittances, money sent home from their relatives who live in the United States. Cuba is a special case. Cuban Americans in Miami ship packages to relatives on the island who cannot afford basic goods. Now that lifeline is under pressure. David Ovalle reports.
DAVID OVALLE: Leonardo Merida (ph) shops at No Que Barato, a discount store in Hialeah, Florida. As Latin music blares in the store, he shops for his sister.
LEONARDO MERIDA: Like sleeping clothes, batas de casas, like this kind of stuff, which is easy for her, like, when she takes a bath to go to sleep in because it's hot in Cuba.
OVALLE: His sister lives in Cuba. Much of what they sell here is meant for people like her. You can buy solar panel lamps, mosquito nets and generators, like one Merida already sent to his family.
MERIDA: So they can sleep at night with their fans and also get them light.
OVALLE: Cuba is struggling with rolling blackouts prompted by U.S. restrictions on fuel. Trade has largely collapsed. Trash piles up on the streets. It's a high-stakes push for regime change. It's also heightened the urgency for humanitarian aid to Cuba. U.S. law allows for such aid.
MICHAEL BUSTAMANTE: Products for sale in Cuban stores are just priced vastly out of proportion.
OVALLE: Michael Bustamante is a historian and Cuba expert at the University of Miami. He says a carton of eggs has become almost unaffordable and may go for as much as 1,500 Cuban pesos.
BUSTAMANTE: My cousin's pension from 30 years as a pharmacist is 2,000 pesos a month. So that gives you a sense of the reliance of the Cuban economy right now on these kinds of parcels and gifts from the outside.
OVALLE: I'm at Rapid Multiservice in a bustling strip mall in Hialeah. Here, customers are lugging in big bags of goods to send to family members in Cuba.
MARISOL GUERRA: Milk. Coffee.
OVALLE: Marisol Guerra (ph) and her husband watch a worker wrap a box bound for relatives in Havana. They fled Cuba two years ago and work odd jobs to keep their Cuba relatives supplied with staples.
GUERRA: Soup. Some medicines.
OVALLE: Businesses like these have become a thorny subject in Miami. Some hard-line exiles say that the communist government benefits financially from some shipments. Local officials, including Hialeah Mayor Bryan Calvo, have announced more scrutiny of companies that do business with Cuba.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BRYAN CALVO: Florida statute allows us, as a municipal government, and my colleagues in the other municipalities to revoke or to suspend businesses supporting the Cuban dictatorship.
OVALLE: That's not quite the case for the discount store No Que Barato. Here, Merida is buying some laminated Catholic prayer cards, featuring Evictus, the saint of urgent causes. They're also for his 46-year-old sister in Cuba. The reason - she has cancer.
MERIDA: And they don't hardly have any medications in there, so I have to reach up to the heavens to see if God take care of us.
OVALLE: He welcomes the Trump administration's efforts at regime change in Cuba and hopes it will happen soon.
For NPR News, I'm David Ovalle in Miami.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
