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(Despite having written a fairly good bio of Che Guevara that turns rotten after Batista is overthrown, Jon Lee Anderson has morphed into a true reactionary as befits those who write for the New Yorker. Having said that, I suppose this article is worth evaluating.)
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. “Come, let me show you,” 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 marqués. Gesturing with his hands, Jordi indicated where he was building an open-air bar and eatery, a wine cellar, a “chill-out area.” “It will be a club for friends,” Jordi said. “Friends with money.”
Inside, Hugo Cancio, one of Jordi’s friends in the new transnational élite, 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’s 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’s “Modern Times” 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’Brien, who was in Havana taping his show. O’Brien had invited them to join him at El Aljibe, an open-air restaurant that is popular with diplomats and Cuba’s senior nomenclatura. “What do you think?” Cancio asked me, smiling. “Cuba’s changing, man.”
full: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/opening-for-business _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
