In a country investment risk survey made by the magazine “Euromoney”, Cuba was ranked 183rd place among 187 countries, even below Somalia. “The Financial Times” reported on June 30, 1995, “Why then, investors may ask, should they bother with Cuba in a world replete with opportunities and more welcoming governments?” Cuba is a country where there is not the rule of law, where the executive, legislative, judicial and the press, are solely on Castro's hands. Foreign investors are, as every body else in Cuba, at the mercy of the whims of a tyrant whose laws frequently change overnight.
Americans are not losing anything by not doing business with Castro. On the contrary, the law is protecting American entrepreneurs from doing stupid business decisions at the expenses of the American taxpayers.
The powerful Spanish financial group, Endesa, with projects in Cuba of over $100 million dollars, discontinued its association with Castro and sued the regime at the Chamber of Commerce of Paris for $12 million for breaking contractual agreements. The Spanish Guitar Hotels group also liquidated its investments in Cuba. There is a long list of foreign business failures due to Cuba’s centralized Stalinist economy. You cannot throw good money after bad in Cuba’s economic wastebasket. Cubans problems are not derived form the U.S. embargo, It is the lack of freedom stupid!
Cuba’s international credit is nil after Castro stopped payments to the Paris Club of European Banks. He also owes over 3 billion dollars to Japan, about $1.5 billion to Argentina, and several billions to Spain, and all the other business partners.
Those foreign investors caught in Castro’s scam want that the U.S. and the American taxpayers assume the Soviet Union’s role of maintaining Castro’s regime to the tune of 6 billion dollars annually, hoping that they would be able to recoup some of their ill advised investments. The Cuban people repudiate all those investors and tourists that have exploited them in partnership with the Cuban tyrant.
Cubans are discriminated in their own country. They resent the apartheid system forced upon them that does not allow Cubans to enter the beaches, restaurants and hotels that are reserved for the tourist and the government elite. The ill feeling is not against the Americans but against those foreigners that invest and are involved in the slave and prostitution trade in Cuba.
American investors should be patient. At the end, they will receive the good will and the rewards for being one of the very few countries that remain in solidarity with the Cuban people’s plight for freedom and democracy during the most tragic period of Cuba’s history.