New website launched to find long-lost Cuban birth certificates
A new company is charging $495 to help people who are desperate to find
long-long Cuban legal documents.
By Frances Robles
frobles@miamiherald.com
Mario Alvarez spent several years and many dollars looking for yellowing
documents in Cuban archives so he could write his family history.
Like other Cuban genealogy enthusiasts and people who need birth
certificates or death records to marry, drive or apply for citizenship,
he encountered a tangled maze of red tape. Experts say the setbacks
start in Washington, at Cuba's consulate.
"I know people who have gone that route and, a year later, they're still
looking for that document," said Alvarez, who lives in Miami Beach and
was born in Camaguey. "Paying more works."
Alvarez discovered a new service called Cuba City Hall, a
Massachusetts-based website hoping to tap into the growing market of
Cubans desperate for official records. Owner Rob Sequin figures some
people are so anxious to get birth certificates and other legal
documents that they will fork over $495 for certified copies.
His hefty price tag demonstrates the difficulties many Cubans have
getting official documents out of the island, and the lengths they'll go
to get them. As a multiple user who needs the papers for personal use —
not a certified document for a driver's license or citizenship
application — Alvarez pays the discounted $250 rate.
"He finds things that would take me five years to find," Alvarez said.
"I'm doing it to have something to leave my kids. I don't think they
care now, but I'm hoping they'll care some day."
With more historical data available online spurring popular television
shows such as NBC's Who Do You Think You Are? and PBS' Faces of America,
experts say researching family roots is a growing trend. But for Cubans,
the fad turns time-consuming and costly, because of an inefficient
system in a country that has historically been difficult to visit. Still
more Cuban exiles needed legal records to become citizens of Spain,
which in recent years made its nationality available to the
grandchildren of its exiles.
Sequin, the publisher of the Havana Journal news site, admits that there
are cheaper ways to get the papers, including Cuba's Washington, D.C.
consulate known as the Cuban Interests Section.
"We know people are supposed to go to the Cuban Interests Section, but
they never answer the phone or emails," Sequin said. "The Cuban
government is not always efficient. People can be waiting three to six
months to get something from the Cuban Interests Section, and then they
come back with a misspelling and have to do it all over."
The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations website says that Cubans just
have to reach out to their local consulate and apply for official legal
documents. The system was digitized in 2005 and is much faster, the site
says.
The consulate could not be reached for comment: the telephone was either
busy or no one picked up.
Alvarez said Sequin has found records dating back to the 1800s.
"It's a very labor intensive process," Sequin said. "A lot of times
people don't even know where they were born. They say , 'Havana,' which
requires going to 15 different civil registries. Sometimes they really
have to dig."
The documents, he said, are certified in Havana at Cuba's Ministry of
Foreign Relations.
But experts say most people don't need to pay such a hefty price,
especially if it's just for research purposes.
"I charge people $30, especially if all they need is a church document
and that's it," said professional genealogist Mayra F. Sanchez-Johnson,
who lives in Salt Lake City. "I don't make a penny off it."
She said the need for notarized birth certificates with the official
government seal surged when the Spanish government decided to offer
citizenship to its descendants. But the process is time consuming and
requires many steps and fees, so Sanchez-Johnson decided against taking
on those clients.
"It's getting harder to get records, because the registries are
deteriorating," she said. "There are books from the 1800s that you can't
even open."
Genealogy clubs have fixers in different cities to run the errands who
charge up to $100, said Ed Elizondo, webmaster of cubagenweb.org. But
they mostly handle the church documents, which are easier to acquire and
do not have to be certified at the Ministry of Foreign Relations.
"Cuba City Hall is aiming its market at people who need the certified
document for passports or driver's licenses, because it's a big problem
to get those certificates in Cuba," said Elizondo, a retired aerospace
engineer in Lauderdale by the Sea. "If you are digging into something
from the 1800s, you need someone who knows what they are doing, or
they'll say 'I can't find it.' The facilities in Cuba are just not
available, the records are kept poorly and often are deteriorating.
"It's hard to get anything even if you are there."
He once posted a question on his site asking if anyone had ever
succeeded in getting a birth certificate through the Cuban Interests
Section in Washington. No one answered.
"I know people who spent years and hundreds of dollars trying to get
information," Elizondo said.
Sequin stresses that he got a legal opinion from a South Florida lawyer
expert in the Cuba trade embargo, who advised him that his business did
not run afoul of the law. The trade embargo, which prohibits doing
business in Cuba, has an exemption for "informational materials."
Office of Foreign Assets Control spokeswoman Marti Adams declined to
comment.
Sequin is confident this service is both legal and in demand.
"For years, people would call us asking us how to get Cuban birth
certificates, and we did not have any way to help people," Sequin said.
"A lot of people absolutely need it and have nowhere to turn."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/03/v-fullstory/2250158/new-website-launched-to-find-long.html
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