Maria Saporta - Staff. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, March 8, 2001.
Cuba presents a great economic opportunity for the United States, especially
the Southeast, if political relations improve, allowing for more trade between
the countries.
At least that is the opinion of several Atlanta business leaders who just
happened to visit Cuba this month.
While the United States continues the 40-year-old trade embargo against
Cuba, countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia, and even Canada, are
increasing their presence on the island.
"It's exploding," said Sam A. Williams, president of the Metro
Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, who noted that Cuba's tourism industry is spawning
new hotels and facilities in Havana and along the beaches.
But U.S. companies are not players in the Cuban economy --- at least not
directly. Coca-Cola products are everywhere, but they are shipped from other
places, including Coca-Cola's Mexican bottler.
The situation makes little sense to some of the Atlanta business leaders
interviewed.
"If we are doing business with North Korea and North Vietnam, why can't
we do business with Cuba?" Williams asked rhetorically. "The best way
to deal with a Communist society is with free enterprise."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has testified in favor of opening trade
channels to Cuba. But political pressure from Cuban expatriates has stifled
those efforts.
"About 1 percent of our population is controlling our policy towards
Cuba," said developer John Dewberry, a principal with Dewberry Capital who
traveled with Williams and fellow developer Ronald Terwilliger, managing partner
of Trammell Crow Residential. "We were curious, so we went."
Jane Shivers, managing director of the Atlanta office of Ketchum Public
Relations, found Cuba "a very alluring place." She found it both
intriguing and complex, and she hopes to return to see more of the country.
"If the embargo were lifted and the travel restrictions were lightened,
I think it would become the No. 1 American tourism destination," Shivers
said.
The Atlantans interviewed all found the Cuban people warm and friendly.
"I fell in love with the place," said Alf Nucifora, a marketing
consultant who is the past chairman of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors
Bureau. "The greatest asset is the Cuban people. They had a joie de vivre.
They eat; they sing; they dance; they talk; and there's no anti-Americanism
whatsoever."
Traveling with Shivers and Nucifora was King & Spalding attorney Horace
Sibley, who was the only person interviewed who had been to Cuba before. They
were traveling as part of a fact-finding mission with the Society of
International Business Fellows.
Sibley had been there in 1989 when he and other Atlantans were trying to
lure the 1996 Olympic Games to town.
"I found that the Cuban people were very friendly and welcoming, as
they had been 12 years earlier," Sibley said. "I also found that
there's a tremendous waste of human potential. You have a population that is
almost 100 percent literate, yet you have engineers that have to drive cabs to
get U.S. dollars to feed their children."
"It's so ironic," Williams said. "The Cuban economy is based
on the U.S. dollar, and we've got an embargo. It makes absolutely no business
sense. And whatever political sense it made was 40 years ago."
Jack Guynn, president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, which monitors
Latin economies for the central bank, said Miami financial institutions are
preparing for the day when the embargo is lifted. Guynn has never been to Cuba
and can't set foot there. "We clearly see it as a country with great
potential," he said.
"From a developer's point of view, I loved Havana," said Dewberry,
who is developing multiuse projects in Midtown. "The beautiful Spanish
architecture and very dense environment; it's what I would love to see happen
here in Midtown. With a couple of billion dollars and knowing when the embargo
was going to be lifted, we could do a great deal of work in Cuba."
But Nucifora and Shivers expressed concern about what would happen to Cuba's
culture and physical environment once the trade embargo was lifted.
"Once you allow the Western influence in, you are going to lose a lot
of the natural charm," Nucifora said. "You will McDonald-ize the
environment."
Our business and civic columnist
e-mail: msaporta@ajc.com
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