MIAMI — With U.S.-Cuba talks ongoing, Calle Ocho entrepreneurs, who cater to tourists in Miami’s Little Havana, said they are preparing for new opportunities.
Fidel Asis Lopez, the owner of Calle Ocho’s The Havana Collection, specializes in authentic Guayabera shirts full of Cuban nostalgia.
Lopez was among the business owners who said they would be open to doing business in a free Cuba.
“Hopefully now, things are changing very quickly,” Lopez said.
At Florida International University, Sebastián A. Arcos, who has been following updates on the talks, said the communist leaders may make a deal.
“They are more interested, obviously, in making money than in the freedom of the Cuban people,” said Arcos, who heads FIU’s Cuban Research Institute.
Cuba’s small private sector has been struggling in a state-controlled economy with U.S. sanctions and a new devastating energy crisis. Arcos said business there would be too risky.
“There cannot be an economic recovery if there is no political reform first,” said Arcos, who was born in Havana and has experience monitoring human rights violations in Cuba.
Entrepreneurs said they hope President Donald Trump and State Secretary Marco Rubio get the communist regime to open the island for business.
Trump and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel have both confirmed the talks, and have both agreed that Cuba is in trouble if nothing changes.
On Friday, Díaz-Canel said FBI agents were going to be allowed on the island to investigate the fatal shooting at sea related to a Florida-registered boat, and Cuba was going to release 51 prisoners who had demonstrated good behavior.
“It is a sovereign practice, no one imposes it on us,” Díaz-Canel said in Spanish.
After Trump didn’t rule out a U.S. military intervention, Democrats in Washington supported a war powers resolution.
“It may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover,” Trump recently said about Cuba, adding that his priority was the conflict with Iran.
More on U.S.-Cuba talks
- In Miami’s Little Havana, hope is high for U.S. military intervention in Cuba
- Cuba’s president confirms government is in talks with US
- Democratic senators file war powers resolution to check Trump on Cuba
- Cuba will release 51 people from prison in an unexpected move
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