be more effectively managed.
Consider the Canadian firm Merchants of Green Coffee.
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products like Cuba Turquino. This premium coffee is made from beans grown
under shade-tree canopies at elevations above 3,000 feet. As the name indicates,
Cuba Turquino is made from Cuban coffee beans, and for that reason, again,
American coffee connoisseurs can’t buy it.
Now, coffee beans from other Latin American nations are also of high quality,
and they’re often certified organic. They’re just not Cuban coffee beans, and to
some people in the coffee business, it’s the principle that matters. Paul Katzeff,
founder of Thanksgiving Coffee Co., a California producer of specialty coffees,
regards the U.S. embargo as impractical (on the grounds that it hasn’t achieved
its goals) and immoral (on the grounds that it punishes the Cuban people rather
than their government). These two reasons are why his company has been
marketing a line of beans called “End the Embargo Coffee” for over a decade. The
coffee actually comes from Nicaragua, but the packaging, emblazoned with the
image of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, gets the point across. Katzeff hastens
to point out that he’s not going “to risk everything I’ve worked for [for] over 30
years” by violating U.S. law, but in addition to selling distinctive, high-quality
coffee, he’s determined “to bring awareness to U.S. consumers on Cuba issues.”
Explains Johanna Schulz, director of Thanksgiving’s social and environmental
policy: “Since we can’t import Cuban coffee directly, we’re using [End the
Embargo] as an awareness tool to educate customers about the embargo on
Cuba.” For the past eight years, Thanksgiving has also donated 15 cents from
every package sold to the U.S.-Cuba Sister Cities Association, a nonprofit that
works to establish relationships between similar-sized cities in the two countries.
The U.S. embargo, which was first imposed in 1962 in response to the
revolutionary communist government’s appropriation of American land holdings
in the country, prevents “U.S. persons” and entities “owned or controlled” by
“U.S. persons” from engaging in any transactions in which Cuba has an
“interest of any nature whatsoever, direct or indirect.” Cuba, therefore, has no
access to the American market, does without U.S. imports, and amasses
substantial debts to other trading partners. But, says a Canadian businessman
with investments in Cuba, “anyone who thinks there will be a ‘for sale’ sign [put]
up by a bankrupt Cuban government is wrong.” Why? Basically because the
embargo doesn’t really have much effect on Cuba or its people.
Cubans now buy ice cream and soft drinks from Swiss-based Nestlé, soap and
shampoo from Anglo-Dutch Unilever, and cigarettes from Brazil’s Souza Cruz. The
fact that the United States is the world’s largest market for rum did not deter
French-owned Pernod-Ricard from building a new distillery in Cuba, and Britain’s
Imperial Tobacco expects to double sales when Americans can once again
purchase premium hand-rolled Cuban cigars. Most of the directors of Canada’s
Sherritt International are barred from the United States by provisions of the
embargo, but they apparently regard the ban as a small price to pay for future
returns on a $1 5 billion investment in Cuba’s nickel and oil and gas industries.
Cuba has also lifted restrictions on many products once unavailable to Cuban
consumers, such as computers, DVDs, and smartphones, and sales of all these
products will be a boon to Telecom Italia, which holds a 27 percent stake in the
country’s state-owned telecom operations.
Katzeff is thinking the same thing that a lot of American businesspeople are
undoubtedly thinking: “When the embargo is over,” he says, “I want to be
there.” As he sees it, Cuban coffee has a promising post-embargo future: Its
potential, he points out, “is phenomenal. The climate hasn’t changed. The soil
hasn’t changed.” And while Katzeff’s geopolitics may rankle some people, his
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