Interesting experience.

We have flown in/out of Havanna with Iberia and Copa and pretty much everything has worked out the same way as in any other airport and country with a departure tax. The only "difference" is that to get the same lack of efficiency of Copa check-in you need to visit the US, but this has nothing to do with Havanna as it seems to be a Copa-tradition (trained by Continental?).

The last time we arrived to Havanna we were sitting in taxi 15 minutes after landing, including immigration, luggage and customs. But the 747's or big Airbuses from Europe do cause some (long) queues on arrival, check-in is quite efficient though.

Wrapping luggage is highly recommended. Some of our friends lost their parfumes and in our bag they put a pile of empty perfume boxes. Even the backup DSLR in the luggage didn't attract them.