John Cassidy writes: One night not long ago, in a new restaurant in Havana called VIPs, the owner, a white-haired Catalan named Jordi, was speculating about what life might be like in Cuba after a reconciliation with the United States. \u201cCome, let me show you,\u201d he said confidingly, leading the way to a large outdoor space between the neighboring building and his own, an eighteenth-century villa built for a Spanish marqu\u00e9s. Gesturing with his hands, Jordi indicated where he was building an open-air bar and eatery, a wine cellar, a \u201cchill-out area.\u201d \u201cIt will be a club for friends,\u201d Jordi said. \u201cFriends with money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside, Hugo Cancio, one of Jordi\u2019s friends in the new transnational \u00e9lite, sat at a corner table. A Cuban-American businessman, Cancio lives in Miami but shuttles to Havana so often that the VIPs menu has named his favorite dish for him: the Don Hugo Paella. Cancio is fifty-one, tall, with an athlete\u2019s shoulders and a limber gait. He was accompanied by his daughter Christy, who had recently finished college in the U.S. Their table looked out on a square bar, a dozen tables full of smartly dressed people, and a huge screen, with Chaplin\u2019s \u201cModern Times\u201d on a continuous loop. On his iPhone 6, Cancio showed me a selfie that he and Christy had taken earlier that day with Conan O\u2019Brien, who was in Havana taping his show. O\u2019Brien had invited them to join him at El Aljibe, an open-air restaurant that is popular with diplomats and Cuba\u2019s senior nomenclatura. \u201cWhat do you think?\u201d Cancio asked me, smiling. \u201cCuba\u2019s changing, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last December, after five decades of Cold War enmity and eighteen months of secret talks, the United States and Cuba announced that they had agreed to normalize relations. It was a rapprochement so long in coming that younger generations, without much memory of invasions, embargoes, and the threat of nuclear obliteration, barely knew why the bad feeling was so ingrained in the politics of both countries. Cancio is a casualty, like many others, of all that preceded this tentative settlement. He left Cuba in the Mariel boatlift of 1980, in which as many as a hundred and twenty thousand Cubans made a traumatic exodus to the United States. Thirty-five years later, as the C.E.O. of a holding company called Fuego Enterprises, he moves freely between Cuba and the U.S. After spending years cultivating connections in both countries, he has become an intermediary sought after by the increasing numbers of Americans\u2014investors, politicians, celebrities\u2014who are going to Cuba. He is pleased to tell you about his private meeting with Sting, or with Paris Hilton. When Google visited Havana recently, a delegation came to his office to discuss the local situation. In February, Cancio spoke to a gathering of political conservatives in Washington, D.C., and in April he addressed an audience in New York at a conference about Cuba organized by the Wharton School of Business.\u00a0Cuba for Entrepreneurs<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n John Cassidy writes: One night not long ago, in a new restaurant in Havana called VIPs, the owner, a white-haired Catalan named Jordi, was speculating about what life might be like in Cuba after a reconciliation with the United States. … Continue reading ![\"Cuba?\"](\"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/imagesizer.jpg\")
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