Word: cuba
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Even Israel, the only country to side with the U.S. in a recent United Nations vote condemning the American trade embargo, does business with Cuba: Israeli firms are second only to Mexican companies in textile investments. These days, the palm-lined patio at the elegant La Ferminia restaurant in suburban Flores is jammed with foreign businessmen power-lunching with government ministers and discreetly whispering into their cellular phones...
SINCE THE FALL OF THE COMMUNIST BLOC in 1989 and the loss of Soviet subsidies in 1992, Cuba has suffered through a period of plummeting prosperity that is euphemistically known as the ``special period.'' Imports have dried up. Industry has folded in on itself. Cuba's No. 1 money earner, the sugar crop, amounted to less than 4 million tons this year--a level not seen for decades. The island's factories are producing at only 30% capacity, giving rise to shortages in everything from clothes and cosmetics to pots and pans...
...socialist credo in the fashion of former communists like Boris Yeltsin. But to salvage what remains of his economy, he has been forced to adapt, imposing some measures that are anathema to his beliefs. In 1990, for example, Castro began soliciting foreign investment. Though he continues to declare that Cuba will never sell off its state-run companies, he has opened up strategic areas such as telecommunications, oil exploration and mining to joint ventures. The latest shocker: condominiums for sale to foreigners, with titillating hints that even land ownership may soon be possible. Drawn by the promise of pent...
...Cuba had signed deals for 185 foreign joint ventures. The Spaniards and Germans were among the first to invest in tourism, which grew at an annual rate of 17% between 1991 and 1993; now interest is rising in Canada and across Europe. Meanwhile, the Monterrey-based magnate Javier Garza-Calderon of Mexico's Grupo Domos bought up half the Cuban phone system in a $1.5 billion deal last year. June saw the arrival of Cuba's first foreign financial institution, the Dutch ING Bank. British companies are looking into oil exploration--even though France's giant Total has recently pulled...
...which has made for a singular irony: the only people left on the sidelines are the Americans. According to a White House source, the Clinton Administration doesn't feel the changes in Cuba have been substantial enough to justify a diplomatic rapprochement, while the conservative Republicans now in control of the U.S. Congress--pressured by Miami's community of Cuban Americans--are bent on keeping the door to Cuba firmly closed to U.S. companies. Just last week Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms introduced legislation that would tighten the 33-year-old economic embargo even more...