They are not magicians, but they invent to avoid closing, to stay afloat and prosper. Some, harassed by the pandemic, like Deyni Terry Abreu, made their own fabrics from scraps (they brought a dress made of carpet to Fashion Week in Turin).
Others, like Lauren Fajardo, put buttons on because they could only hire a seamstress. There were those who, like Alejandro Peñalver, slept for a while in a small room that in the mornings served as a photography studio after hiding the bed and other telltale clues.
Many stories of creativity, daring and resilience were heard during a panel sponsored by OnCuba and the British Embassy in Havana on January 20.
While the meeting was taking place, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, was taking office for his second term. One of his first decisions was to return Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a status that complicates the possibilities of all economic actors on the island to carry out their business actions naturally and effectively.
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The host of the event, Sir George Hollingbery, ambassador, acted as moderator and panel participant, recounting his own experiences as an entrepreneur in his country. The topics discussed revolved around three aspects on which the jury of the award focused its attention to choose the winner: profitability; innovation and creativity; and social impact.
Before becoming a diplomat, Hollingbery tried seven or eight businesses, accumulating experience in the business world. Of these, “six were terrible ideas,” he said. But one did succeed: a small family business dedicated to providing services in veterinary clinics and pet stores.
According to the businessman turned diplomat, who is now concluding his three-year term at the head of the embassy, there is a triad of recommendations and realities that any entrepreneur must take into account.
The first is to have a good idea; the second is that the business is going to cost much more money and time than expected and, the third — extremely important — is to take things slowly.
For the very particular Cuban scenario, which Hollingbery has scrutinized with an analyst’s magnifying glass and the phlegm of his origin, he has his own suggestions.
He recommends starting a business model that already has successful replicas in other parts of the world, always being very careful with social responsibility.
“Cuban citizens have been educated to have a social impact in what they do,” he said, but warns that “you cannot have a social impact without income.”
The overwhelming shortages on the island are continuous lines of pressure on private businesses that must help the communities in which they operate.
Deyni Terry Abreu: Solidarity or philanthropy? MSMEs in the popular eye
Although there is in fact a culture of solidarity or philanthropy that most do not shy away from, especially in emergency situations, MSMEs are often collectively perceived as islands of abundance called to fill the gaps left by the State.
“Social work in Cuba is atypical and exhausting,” said Deyni Terry Abreu, economist, designer and lawyer at the head of BarbarA’s and Semana Hispana Moda.
Inspired by her mother Barbara, who had nine children, worked in a sugar mill and made clothes for her offspring, the business is located in Jesús María, one of the historic neighborhoods of deep Havana.
People take BarbarA’s as a fairy godmother. Recently, the venture, in alliance with an international entity, provided medicines for more than 200 people in the neighborhood.
It also makes donations of various kinds or depreciates clothing for purchase by low-income pockets. Nearly a hundred families have benefited from such actions.
For Lauren Fajardo, fashion designer and co-founder and creative director of Dador, a Cuban ethical fashion brand based in Havana, social responsibility means promoting ethnic equality, women’s empowerment, ethical and fair compensation, and zero waste.
During the health crisis, she joined the delivery enterprise Mandao for a donation campaign with food from the Villa Hermosa farm, which benefited some 200 families.
Alejandro Peñalver: Taxes
One of the most important contributions of private enterprises in Cuba is taxes, and unfortunately there is still a percentage of tax evasion, said Alejandro Peñalver.
An economist by profession and former Chevening scholarship recipient, he trained in the British scholarship scheme to train high-performance professionals and turn them into local leaders or entrepreneurs in their countries of origin.
Creator of the CubaModela agency, now at the head of the online commerce platform CBMtienda.com and the CBM photography studio, known for offering comprehensive services to entrepreneurs and enterprises that wish to improve their presence in the market, Peñalver points out that the tax rates for entrepreneurs on the island are among the highest in the world.
With his online store, the young economist achieves between 10%-30% gross profitability on direct costs and does not recommend aiming for high profits, because in the end “you get less, as the price is very high.”
According to Peñalver, a completely new private sector in turn is required to make a high contribution, “when they are not even ready for themselves.”
At a global level, the mortality rate of MSMEs is very high. It is estimated that 70% of small and medium-sized businesses close within five years in Latin America. Despite this, MSMEs represent 90% of all enterprises and are responsible for almost 70% of both jobs and gross domestic product (GDP) worldwide.
In Cuba, the survival rate is unknown. It is known that more than 11,000 have been registered, since their approval in September 2021, but how many of these are currently operational is an enigma, at least publicly.
At the end of the panel, the guests were able to share in the semi-outdoor spaces of the house at 15 and Paseo, one of the architectural icons of the Vedado neighborhood, on a cool day in the Cuban winter.
The DeCancio Foods brand was in charge of providing the drinks, as a way of supporting the entire event in which more than 70 people — among them, the competing ventures and others with prestige gained in the sector — were able to exchange ideas and impressions about the present and the very challenging future that awaits the Cuban economy.
Dayron Robles: A reconversion run or a reconversion in a hurry
World record holder and Olympic champion in the 110-meter hurdles race, Dayron Robles (Guantánamo, 1986) is another of the sports stars who, once retired, have sought fortune in the private sector.
The best-known case is that of Javier Sotomayor, the best high jumper in history, who in 2021 opened a private business in his former home in the Miramar neighborhood, the Bar-Restaurant 2.45, in homage to his 1993 world record, still standing.
Robles was one of the guests at the award ceremony for the Best Entrepreneur of 2024. The former runner lives on the outskirts of Havana, in the Cotorro municipality, where he manages a small farm where he plants using agroecological methods to supply his tapas bar and his hostel in Havana, a venture that came about after the closure of his tourist rental business that collapsed with the closure of borders due to the pandemic.
Most sports careers are fleeting.…
Everything starts there, when the sports career ends and in the meantime, in 2012, an injury made me think about retirement and ask myself what to do with the four cents you have, how are you going to invest them and how you take the risk in your country to do things that are different. I think that was what led me to start my own business.
Was it very difficult to move from the sports world to the business world?
Definitely, yes. I started out knowing nothing and it was like self-financing a career, where you start to find obstacles that are painful, because there is emotional wear and tear; you lose time, money, and still suffer setbacks, like on the track, but live the opportunity of experience.
Your ventures have been far from sports.…
Since 2012 I have been getting into certain niches, setting up structures that are unknown to me, because, as you say, none of my ventures have to do with sports, which although it is “the right of the people,” I have not been able to do anything that has to do with sports. But I have been learning and connecting.
What do you think of an award like this that promotes entrepreneurship in Cuba?
It’s great. It’s the first time I’ve seen something like this. I think we are having an identity and we are awarding the identity of the Cuban entrepreneur to make visible that we are moving forward. This type of meeting helps you connect with people from other specialties and you mutate and mature and enjoy the process of learning and undertaking, all in order to make Cuba a little better.
What do you expect from the immediate future for Cuba and for entrepreneurship?
We have to adapt. Unfortunately, we do not have the decision in our hands about what we can or cannot do on many issues. Each one of us will have to make a personal effort in order to sustain ourselves over time in this type of community.
Lauren Fajardo: “We can’t be Gucci. We’re going to be us”
Lauren Fajardo (Havana, 1983) is a repatriate. She lived in the United States and remembers that when she traveled to the island she found everything old and museum-worthy, “a country frozen in time.” Her perspective changed as she penetrated the Cuban social fabric.
With a design degree from ISDi (Higher Institute of Industrial Design), Lauren returned permanently during the second Obama administration, when the thaw between the two countries boosted private businesses in Havana and other tourist cities.
At first, she didn’t have the tools to start an enterprise. “There was no business model, but there was a clear objective: to make conscious, ethical, sustainable fashion with a social impact.” When she started in 2018, “people thought we were crazy for setting prices.” They started with a seamstress and the three partners as assistants. Now they are self-sustaining and profitable.
Why is your clothing venture called Dador?
My mother, Rosario Cárdenas, is an admirer of Lezama Lima and I grew up in that cultural and poetic environment.
With your return to the island, you remind me of the song “Habana,” by X Alfonso, when he said: Muchacho, ¿qué tú haces virando pa’ ca?
When I came from the United States, I was greatly impressed by the private sector and its influence on the opening and the possibilities of starting something of our own that we did not have when we graduated from ISDi. Besides Dador being a fashion brand, it represents an image, a culture, a way of changing mentality. So it made a lot of sense to return and be part of the change that was taking place here.
Maybe I’m being unfair with what I’m going to say, but you returned to a country where Western brands are greatly admired, especially among young people, and yet you claim your brand and say that Cuba has something to say in the midst of this commercial hegemony.… Are you romanticizing with a gesture of nationalism?
No, I’m not romanticizing. It’s the reality. I have traveled the world and I realize that Cuba is unique and so I defend the sense of preserving that exclusivity, despite all the difficulties. I call it sustainability out of necessity.
It forces us to adapt to the various difficulties we have here, but at the same time these are possibilities and sometimes we think we are many years behind, when in reality we are at the forefront. For example, in this movement of sustainability, recycling, social impact, I consider that Cuba is at the forefront.
Do you say this with full responsibility?
Yes, because it is part of our idiosyncrasy. It is not only about profitability, but how can I have a social impact that influences my community. And that happens naturally here, when in other countries it is like a cliché and in the fashion industry when we recycle we call it green washing. But recycling here is part of the need and becomes something intrinsic in your business model.
Aren’t you washing your face here?
No, it’s just that we recycle everything, we reuse everything, and it’s already part of the business model.
Looking back at your life in the United States and your life in Cuba, did you make the right decision?
Starting a business is difficult anywhere in the world. The thing is that in Cuba everything is yet to be done. When we started in 2018, there were very few of us, no one was doing this and we didn’t even have a business model because it didn’t exist and we created it as we grew. We weren’t a restaurant, an Airbnb, which was the most common thing back then.
Compared to a Prada model, a Gucci model…. Would there be pride in wearing a Dador?
Yes, why not? Really, when you analyze it, you’re talking about two brands that initially started out as family businesses. (Guccio Gucci was a doorman at a London hotel and the Prada brothers started making leather suitcases).
You have to adapt. I’m in Cuba, creating a new brand. There is no perception of clothing made in Cuba. The idea of a Cuban product, apart from cigars and rum, is that it is of poor quality. Before thinking of any international brand as a reference, I have to think about making a product that has value and educating about that product that is the result of the expertise and intelligence that exists in this country.
Are there Dador collections on international catwalks?
Yes, we have presented ourselves on catwalks at many events, both in Italy and other European countries, as well as in the United States.
And how has the reception been?
Very good. It is about changing the concepts about Cuba, which are already pre-established, which are clichés, such as rum, the mulatto woman, cigars, beaches, vintage cars. We serve a Cuban concept, but with a universal aesthetic and that helps it to be accepted.
We cannot make something luxurious, we cannot be Gucci, we are going to be ourselves. When we made the Malecón collection, which are completely rectilinear dresses, you see it and say this could be Scandinavian or French, but it is really Cuban, inspired by our visual culture.
Best Entrepreneur of 2024 Award for Yucasabi, dedicated to the ancestral cassava bread
Award-winning ancestors. Brief chat with the Casabe girl
Although almost an hour had passed since the Entrepreneur of 2024 Award was announced, Yudisley Cruz still couldn’t believe it. For this economist and master in Tourism Management born in Isla de la Juventud, but with decades living in the capital, the recognition did cross her mind once. Cruz is the leader of the award-winning enterprise Yucasabi, a venture that is dedicated to the production and marketing of cassava, and for this she manages two restaurants.
Why did you decide to focus on cassava? Was it to continue a family tradition or to detect a window of opportunity?
The passion began during the pandemic and there was time to be at home. Before the quarantines, I managed a restaurant in Old Havana where one of the city’s cassava producers brought me the product and asked me if I knew it. Of course, I knew of it, through history texts, but I had never eaten it. And that’s where my first connection with cassava began.
That ended when the pandemic hit and I started to investigate a little more. And that’s when I was caught up in the whole historical journey it has had and how it came to our days to such an extent that I fell in love with the product. Then I wondered how a cultural value of that scope and depth did not have a prominent presence and recognition in Cuban cuisine. I decided to vindicate it with a project where cassava was the house specialty.
And in the dietary order, cassava is very generous….
Of course! As a food it is very healthy. It has no gluten, no fat, no salt, it goes with everything and in the restaurant we honor that and we do not consume wheat flour. We want people who are allergic to gluten and others who are vegetarian or have a special diet to be able to eat at Yucasabi with peace of mind and safety. Likewise, the croquettes we make are made from yuca, the cream, the fried foods and everything around are local products, which is another aspect that we also strongly defend.
Is Italian food prohibited at Yucasabi?
Not at all. We have a very varied gastronomy with this ingredient that we even make pizza and lasagna with cassava.
In eastern Cuba, cassava is not an unknown character or as little appreciated as it is in the capital.…
True, it is a tradition more present in the east of the country, often associated with festivals, but really this is a product that can be eaten every day, it does not have to go to war with bread. There is a very Cuban saying that says if there is a lack of bread, cassava and we repeat, as Martí, the apostle, said, I prefer cassava to bread. Personally, I like both bread and cassava and I do not perceive any conflict for a daily diet. So cassava deserves a push so that it is known by many people. And look how far we have come! In addition, it is a tradition shared by several countries in the area.
How does an award like this one for entrepreneur of the year and also the recognition of UNESCO as a world heritage for the practices of making cassava support you?
Yucasabi was part of the process and accompanied the Cuban side in general and in different ways, but in the case of the award we applied because obviously we wanted to win, but it only crossed my mind once that we could achieve it. It even made me a little nervous, which is difficult for me, but we are grateful to OnCuba and we also feel very proud, and at the same time, a little responsible for being the first face of this award.
In accounting terms, how does this award benefit entrepreneurship?
I cannot tell you at this moment what we are going to invest the cash prize in. We need to meet with the three partners, I am the leader, and we have a team that is in love and committed to what we do to think collectively about what we are going to use this prize for.
Does the cassava that you offer follow the orthodox indigenous recipe?
One of the many virtues of cassava is that it is processed as the indigenous people conceived it. That has not changed. The yuca is peeled, grated, squeezed and that mass called catibía is heated. Perhaps in some stages of that process something has changed because five centuries have gone by and we are in a different time, but the process is basically the same. The changes have been small.
For example, when it comes to squeezing the yuca to extract the liquid, which is a juice; before it was handled vertically, today it is done horizontally. Before it was grated more manually, now the process has been mechanized. The burén, which is a metal or clay plate used in the kitchen, especially to cook cakes, such as cassava, is rarely made of baked clay and steel plates are proliferating.
So history can be tasted!
Of course, the culinary experience is greater when your dish has an ancient history. You feel better as a diner, as a customer, as a person, and if you are Cuban…even better.
Economic forecasts
Two of the guests at the first edition of the award convened by OnCuba and the British embassy in Havana were the doctors in economic sciences Juan Triana Cordoví and Omar Everleny Pérez, both with a long and rigorous exercise of academic criteria.
The first maintains the Contrapesos column on our platform, and the second is a regular contributor to our platform.
An unavoidable fact. The dialogue with them took place without yet knowing that, in the mountain of executive orders signed on the same Monday, January 20, was the reentry of Cuba into the list of state sponsors of terrorism, from which it had been erased six days earlier by an executive order of outgoing President Joe Biden.
- JUAN TRIANA CORDOVÍ
Today is January 20th. Nothing to add. Now, knowing the character as we do, how dangerous is the return of the self-proclaimed Tariff Man for private initiative in Cuba?
I have always said that Trump is difficult even for himself. So you don’t know exactly what he is going to do. There are those who bet on his businessman spirit, and perhaps in that sense it will be favorable for Cuba or for the entrepreneurial sector in Cuba; but if it is the opposite, then it will not be good at all.
If the screws are tightened, would the Cuban government be obliged to loosen the strings that have tied down the private sector?
There is no reason for a U.S. administration, whatever it may be, to tighten the screws on Cuba. None, none, none. The other thing is that the internal opening does not have to wait for Trump to tighten the screws on Cuba, in a given scenario, because ultimately the opening of the Cuban economy is a process that has had ups and downs, but it has been a process conceived long before Trump thought of being president.
There is no need to wait for Trump or Rubio or Claver-Carone to tighten the screws. Cuba has a process and part of the possibilities it has for negotiation and advantage is exactly to follow a determined process, of course, regarding the transformation of the Cuban economy as it appears in the programmatic documents of the Communist Party.
For some, one looks too far to the North to see the signs and then act in Cuba; a rebound policy.…
Well, because we are 90 miles away. There are people who think that we are important for the United States, but we are not. We are not among its priorities.
The closest market that Cuba has, even though it is a bad neighbor, is the United States, and it is where there are also more than two million Cuban residents. A fifth of the Cuban population resides today in the United States, therefore we must look to the United States in some way.
On the other hand, it is the country that classified us as its enemy, that put us on a shameful list, from Reagan on, so it is obvious that what happens in the United States is highly sensitive. It is asymmetrical, because for the United States what happens in Cuba is not highly sensitive. And that is another of our great problems, the asymmetry in the relationship.
In the geopolitical game, do you think that powers like Russia or China would let us down or rescue us?
I’m not going to venture it. China and Russia are too big and we are too small. Between those two and the United States, the fate of the world is at stake. That is not the case with the relationship with Cuba. At one point in time, the fate of the world was at stake in Cuba. That moment happened decades ago and I do not believe it will happen again. It would not be good for it to happen. It would not be good for my grandchildren.
- OMAR EVERLENY
Do you think that Trump’s assumption of office and an expected radicalization of the strangulation policy towards Cuba will condition the government to reposition the private sector to deal with the embargo and therefore loosen the moorings and apprehensions that it now maintains over it?
We have to make progress on our own, which means that you have to define where the potential lies, because Cuba’s problem, among many others, is one of goods and services. These potentialities lie in the private sector. Socialism does not necessarily mean that the State has to own all the means of production, but only the fundamental ones, and, in addition, there are financial mechanisms to control the private sector and its profits and social contributions.
How much weight do you give to private enterprise?
The private sector, without credit or any kind of facilities, managed to sell 44% of the goods consumed at a retail level in 2023. When the statistics for 2024 are published, it will be seen that it was a more complicated year, where chicken, eggs, rice, and food in this country were supplied through MSMEs.
We can think that perhaps 60% of the goods that have been marketed to the population come from the private sector. So there is the demonstration that you have to use those potentialities. On the other hand, short-term international pressure has been relieved, as the Paris Club has postponed the debt payment period.
With a huge energy crisis, with a sugar industry that is a disaster, if you do not export, if you do not have foreign currency, with tourism converted into an enclave apparatus, in the midst of blackouts, where tourists are trapped in hotels, then, no matter how many first-class facilities you have, if the economy does not improve, if there are no other promising signs, you will not be able to obtain the necessary resources.
And what about moves like the cession of land to the Vietnamese?
We really need to give more applicability to the issue of food security, but I wonder why land has been given for three years to a Vietnamese company for rice production and you cannot give a national the same conditions; because the national can also look for fresh resources with a family member or with entities abroad.
You cannot always see the economy from a political point of view. In addition, giving the Vietnamese producer only three years, when you should have given them ten at least. What I am saying is that you have to give the same treatment to national capital as to foreign capital if you are going to make a coherent policy, which is what this country needs and there is hardly any time left.
What do you think of awards like this to stimulate the private sector?
I think it is a wonderful initiative to give an award to entrepreneurs. In addition, I see how in the last three years the embassies have been getting involved in this sector. It is a step forward in the understanding that Cuba has to open up much more.
What do you think are the government’s concerns about the private sector?
My personal answer is that they are afraid of losing political power and that is not the case, because in fact since 1968 small and medium-sized businesses have not been allowed due to the same fear of losing political power and today these businesses are all over the country and nothing has happened.
If you look at China and Vietnam, they have been advancing for decades with small and medium-sized private businesses and there the communist party has not lost political control.
The State has to take care of those who are left behind, the retirees who earn 1,528 pesos, and not look at those who are getting rich with offers of goods and services. That is welcome. I have accompanied many entrepreneurs in Cuba and abroad and, in their private conversations, they do not talk about conquering political quotas. They talk about problems and goals of their businesses.
Too many suspicions.…
Too many. Too much attention is paid to social conversation, blogs, memes, influencers abroad, but here in Cuba people think as hard as abroad. I’ll tell you more: here I have found more radical positions than in Miami. Forget about all that a little, and empower your people on the island, because if you don’t solve people’s problems, they end up emigrating and they can be high-profile professionals who have taken decades to train. Then you face a thorny social issue, because what had been achievements of the Revolution such as education and health are today on a tight rope.
Goodbye, Sir George Hollingbery
Finally, and always helpful to her colleagues, the press officer of the embassy, Cristina Escobar, has obtained an exclusive with the British ambassador.
Sir George Hollingbery shows off his diplomatic talent and receives us at a culminating moment of his career. He is practically packing his bags to say goodbye to the island.
What is the most striking impression you have of this country?
We believe that one of the most important changes that has occurred in this country in recent times is the number of approved MSMEs, around 11,000. That has a great impact, we are interested in it and we have observed it.
It may be that for people from the United Kingdom it is difficult to understand how profound this change is for Cuba. Here there were private businesses around the 1990s, self-employed, but they did not have a legal framework that entrepreneurs now have, which has generated an earthquake of changes.
I think that we still have to ask ourselves if the government is going to allow this growth regime for the private sector, but only time will tell.
In the case of Cuba, which is a very particular country, from your experience as a European diplomatic and political observer, what would be the obstacles that you see that are hindering, eroding, or containing the rise of private enterprise?
The main difficulties facing Cuban entrepreneurs at the moment is uncertainty. It is not up to me to say what the government does or should do with MSMEs, but I think it is very difficult for MSME owners to understand how the laws affect them, to what extent they limit them, whether they allow them to grow or not. The main enemy of business is uncertainty. I’m not saying this in a hostile sense, but rather it is one of the main obstacles facing any entrepreneurship in the world.
Today Trump has resumed his position in the White House. Do you think Europe will remain firm in its sovereign decision regarding Cuba?
I do not believe that Europe’s attitude towards Cuba depends on what Donald Trump does. There is pressure within the continent to change Europe’s attitude towards Cuba. I do not believe that Trump has made a decision on that and I do not believe that Trump is particularly interested in Cuba.
He has appointed people within his team who are very interested in Cuba, but even they, and I am thinking specifically of Marco Rubio, understand that, in global terms, the conflict between Cuba and the United States is not the most urgent or priority issue that he has to face.
Nobody knows what will happen between Cuba and the United States during the years of Donald Trump’s mandate and it is not my job to predict what will happen, but I think it is pertinent to say that it is unlikely that relations will improve and it is also likely that nothing different will happen, not much more.
When you said goodbye to today’s panel, you praised the courage of Cubans who stay and bet on Cuba, because they understand that there is some future of prosperity. What is the basis for that criterion?
The simplest reason why I affirm that is because all those people who were there could have left. The type of people who turn out to be good entrepreneurs or businesspeople share the same characteristics of successful emigrants: I need to progress, change my life, continue.
That type of attitude is shared by both. They are people who have decided to stay in Cuba to change Cuba from within and how they understand it; instead of changing their lives outside of Cuba, and that is to be applauded.
It is not an easy decision, it is not easy to buy a car, there are many blackouts, there may not be water tomorrow, sometimes the grandmother gets sick and there are not all the resources in the hospitals and, nevertheless, they stay, and I think that deserves applause.
If you allow me something more personal. Looking back on your past as an entrepreneur, do you see yourself reflected in them?
I think that by the mere fact of having chosen to be here, then I think I have things in common with them.
Author
Angel Marqués Dolz
