Foreign investments are dominating in the Mariel Special Development Zone, though its directors still describe the advances as discreet.
About 20 projects have received the green light in the Mariel Special Development Zone, three years after being created as a key destination for foreign investments in Cuba. Though the pace of authorisations is not considered good, the willingness to accept 100 per cent foreign capital industries stands out compared to previous common practice in the country.
The new Code covers a group of transcendental aspects for the labour relations of those working today in the non-state sector, including remunerated domestics, but there are still gaps that must be bridged.
The principal regulation in Cuba of the framework related to employment is based on the Constitution of the Republic, whose article 45 stipulates that “Work is a right, a duty and an honour for each citizen.”
The 25th Havana International Ballet Festival, like the island’s other events and institutions, has benefited from the increase of cultural exchange with the United States. A sign of this was the presence in the Cuban capital’s stage of two attractive groups: Martha Graham Dance Company and the company Dance Americana.
A week ago a British journalist told me that “Cubans don’t eat well.” It was a comment based on his limited experience of a first-time traveller to Havana who had eaten in very few places, barely an impression not reasoned caused by the dishes he had in those places; but I felt a certain distress, of wounded pride, and I retorted alleging that, on the contrary, Cuban food is very delicious and its seasoning is exquisite. However, a few hours later a restaurant on the Avenida del Puerto discredited my opinion as well as the prestige of Cuban gastronomy.
