Three years ago, Rene Vazquez jumped a raft to escape Cuba, leaving behind his wife, his three kids and his parents. He struggled to make it in Miami, working long hours in construction to send his family money.

His luck ran out at the end of August, when he and two other men were killed by a spray of gunfire at a cockfighting arena in West Dade.

There was a time when Cuban exiles like Vazquez died alone in Miami without their relatives back home getting to mourn them properly. Times have changed.

A Miami funeral home chain that specializes in shipping exiles back to their homeland is sending Vazquez's body to Guanabo in the next few days, where his family and friends will gather for an all-night viewing and burial at a local cemetery.

``He doesn't have anybody but me here in Miami, said Vazquez's uncle Jose Guerra, who left Cuba with him aboard the same raft. He and other raftmates pitched in to come up with the $4,000 to give Vazquez a funeral service here, with flight back home. ``It seemed wrong to bury him here when his whole family is over there.

Funeraria Latina Nacional, near Flagler Dog Track in Miami, and its sister, La Funeraria Cubana in Hialeah, are capitalizing on that sentiment.

``When you have a person who has just arrived here and 90 percent of their family is still back in Cuba, it makes no sense to bury them here, says Rafaiy Khalifa, owner of the funeral homes. ``A lot of the old Cuban funeral homes in town haven't wanted to offer this service, because there is so much political pressure to not have anything to do with Cuba. But I saw it as a needed service. There was a time the most you could do was send pictures of the funeral to Cuba.

About 2 1/2 years ago, shortly after Khalifa opened his funeral homes -- there are also branches on Bird Road in Miami and in Deerfield Beach -- he contacted the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to reach an agreement that would make sending bodies to the island easier, he said.

``There was a time when only Cubans with tourist visas who were just visiting the United States were allowed to be returned to the island, he said. ``Now, Cuba is allowing anybody who is a Cuban citizen, even if they have lived here for decades.

Long-standing policy

The U.S. Treasury Department has long licensed domestic funeral homes to ship remains to Cuba, on a case-by-case basis. Said a Treasury spokeswoman: ``The funeral homes simply submit a letter of request to the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, and we send them back a confirmation that states they are licensed to perform that transaction. There is no fee from our end.

The Treasury Department has noted a slight rise in requests for licenses recently. Although it won't disclose which funeral homes have made the requests, the rising numbers likely have to do with the fact that Khalifa's funeral homes have aggressively sought out the business. They handle an average of two Cuba shipments per week, Khalifa said.

His ad in the yellow pages: ``A fallen leaf falls to its roots.

Caballero and Rivero, long-established funeral homes in Miami's Cuban community, don't offer the service.

``We don't do it for a number of reasons, says Mariana Caballero, vice president of operations for Caballero Woodlawn (which also operates Rivero), whose great-great-grandfather founded Caballero funeral homes in Cuba in 1857.

No political reason

``The paperwork is very involved, and there are always delays. [Processing can take several weeks.] The families get very impatient. We have done it, but not in the last three years, I'd say. It has nothing to do with politics. Death has nothing to do with politics. It's just that once the body gets to Cuba, we are not responsible anymore.

Some clients of Funeraria Latina Nacional and La Cubana have accompanied the bodies of their loved ones to Cuba to make sure they reached the correct destination. But most rely on relatives on the island who are there to witness their arrival and burial.

According to a spokesman at the Cuban Interest Section, the Cuban government has always offered free funerals and burials to its citizens but only recently extended that to citizens who permanently lived outside the island.

``If your last wish is to be buried in)Cuba, the government has decided to make that possible, he said.

The Cuban Interest Section charges a fee of about $400 for processing the immigration papers that prove Cuban citizenship. La Nacional and La Cubana charge $2,800, not including those processing fees, or shipping costs, for a body going to Cuba.

Casket and funeral

The price includes a casket and complete funeral with viewing in Miami. Charges by charter companies that fly to Cuba bring the total to about $4,000, depending on what part of the island the body is going to, Khalifa said.

Although some in Miami have questioned whether Cuba may be getting more of a cut than the $400 processing fee, specifics are hazy. Khalifa says charter companies that fly to Cuba charge about $2 a pound to ship a casket, bringing the air fare to $700 or $800.

``You have tiny little Cubans, and you have big Cubans,'' Khalifa says.

However, Vivian Mannerud, owner of ABC Charters, says her company charges about $200 total to fly a body to the island. ``We charge the price of a one-way ticket, not by the pound,'' Mannerud said.

Caribbean Family & Travel Services, which a manager at the funeral homes says she uses frequently, did not respond to repeated phone calls.

Khalifa's clients don't worry about those details, however.

Comparable to U.S.
The $4,000 total ``is about what it would cost to bury somebody here, said Maribel Moro, of southwest Miami, who sent her nephew's body to the island this past February. ``He had only been here four years. He died in a car accident. He had his mother in Cuba. I decided that's where he belonged. I think the funeral home is providing a good service, because sometimes you need a body to believe a loved one has died. How many people have died here without their families in Cuba ever getting to see the body?

Next for Khalifa, who prides himself on understanding his market's special needs:

Funeraria Los Santeros, slated to open at Calle Ocho and 19th Avenue in December.

``People of the Santeria faith are discriminated against by some funeral homes because they perform rituals. There are sometimes conflicts when you have another family of a different religion in the adjacent chapel, he said.

Funeraria Los Santeros will be more of a temple, done in all white.

Elena Caro, of Botanica Mama Chola in Kendall, applauds the idea.

``In the Yoruba religion, when somebody dies, you have to do cleansings with herbs, you have to do certain rituals asking the saints if they want to go with the deceased or stay with one of his godchildren. There is sometimes the breaking of dishes. Sometimes this doesn't go over well in some funeral homes.