Cuba: Private business owners are nervous

says the WSJ: Cuba’s Budding Private Sector Looks Nervously to Future. Possible shifts under Trump on ties to U.S., island’s own leadership add up to uncertainty

A third of Cuba’s 5 million workers are now in the private sector, including 522,000 business owners, up from 150,000 six years ago. Much of the seed capital for those businesses came from Cuban-Americans’ remittances to relatives here, a flow that has more than doubled since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. Those funds amounted to $3.4 billion in 2015, the latest year for which figures are available—more than Cuba’s total export earnings, according to Emilio Morales, head of Miami’s Havana Consulting Group.

What the article forgets to mention is that The Cuba Travel Sector is Modern Day Serfdom. For instance, Airbnb “only recruits new property listings from an existing government roster of 21,000 state-authorized rental homes.”

You need strong political connections to the Communist Party or a proof of concept approved by neighborhood block captains that, in essence, vouch that you are worth the risk and will not cause political trouble.

For now, as long as the regime is making money, that is what matters. In fact, Airbnb does not even hide the fact that close to 100% of the money you pay goes to the government, according to Airbnb‘s regional director for Latin America Jordi Torres

Of whatever money they may earn,

90% of the money a guest pays end up in regime coffers, not the person who operates the Airbnb rental.

So, yes, “private business” owners in Cuba have plenty of reasons to be nervous.

In other Cuba news, Carlos Fernández Gondín, Castrogonia’s Minister of the Interior died on Saturday, 7 January,

the bastard was a cold-blooded thug and murderer whose chief aim in life was to enslave the Cuban people and to imprison, torture, and kill anyone who dared to oppose the Castro dynasty.