A flow of Cubans – going home

A flow of Cubans – going home
By Nick Miroff
The Washington Post
Published: January 2, 2016

HAVANA — Mauricio Estrada left Cuba in 2003 full of the same
frustrations as so many others eager to move away. He married a Spanish
woman, moved to Barcelona and got a job as a prep cook.

A dozen years later and divorced, Estrada is back, this time as the
proprietor of a stylish Iberian-themed restaurant, Toros y Tapas,
decorated with old matador posters and the taxidermied heads of longhorn
bulls.

"Having my own restaurant is a dream," said Estrada, 48. "I never could
have done it if I'd stayed in Cuba."

Estrada is a repatriado, a repatriate, one of the growing number of
Cubans who have opted to move back to the island in recent years as the
Castro government eases its rigid immigration rules. The returnees are a
smaller, quieter countercurrent to the surge of Cubans leaving, and
their arrival suggests a more dynamic future when their compatriots may
come and go with greater ease, helping to rebuild Cuba with earnings
from abroad.

Not since the early years of Fidel Castro's rule, when his leftist
ideals brought home a number of exiles initially sympathetic to the 1959
revolution, have so many Cubans voluntarily returned.

The difference is that today's repatriates are not coming back for
socialism. They are coming back as capitalists. Which is to say, they
are returning as trailblazing entrepreneurs. Prompted by President Raúl
Castro's limited opening to small business and his 2011 move allowing
Cubans to buy and sell real estate, the repatriates are using money
saved abroad to acquire property and open private restaurants,
guesthouses, spas and retail shops.

Cuban authorities said they could not provide up-to-date statistics, but
in 2012, immigration officials said they were processing about 1,000
repatriation applications each year. The numbers appear to have
increased since then, at least judging from anecdotal evidence and the
proliferation of new small businesses in Havana run by returnees.

Communist authorities no longer stigmatize such Cubans or view them as
ideologically suspicious, provided they're not coming back as
anti-government activists. Virtually all Cubans who emigrated are
eligible for repatriation unless they are deemed to have committed
"hostile acts against the state."

Returnees say the paperwork takes about six months to process. It allows
them to return home with a shipping container's worth of goods and to
regain access to the socialist country's benefits, including free health
care and food rations.

For Cubans nostalgic for home or determined to build small businesses on
the island, repatriation offers travel privileges few others enjoy.
Cubans returning from Spain, for example, do not have to renounce their
Spanish citizenship and the all-important European Union passports that
come with it, allowing them to travel far more freely than ordinary
Cuban passport holders, who need visas for practically any country they
wish to visit.

The repatriation trend is a classic case of "Cuban ingenuity," said
Pedro Freyre, a partner and an expert on Cuba trade laws at the Akerman
law firm in Miami. "It's an instinct for taking advantage of any
opening, and the perception that with this mechanism an expat can have
the best of two systems."

To be clear, the number of repatriates is dwarfed by the more than
70,000 Cubans who left the island in 2015, the highest figure in decades
and nearly twice as many as departed in 2014. The emigration wave is
being driven by a range of old and new factors, from the island's
perpetual economic troubles to new fears that better relations with the
United States will bring an end to the unique U.S. immigration
privileges extended to Cubans.

For Enrique Soldevilla, 34, the December 2014 announcement that the
United States and Cuba would begin normalizing relations was the
decisive factor in his return home after a decade in the Dominican
Republic. Optimistic that the U.S. thaw would bring better times to
Cuba, he moved back to Havana in April, giving up a well-paid job in
audio and video production.

Life in the Dominican Republic was good "professionally and
financially," Soldevilla said, "but something was always missing."

He felt a "spiritual need" to be in his home country and culture, with
his family close by.

Someone like Soldevilla would have had few options just a few years ago,
when restrictions were much tighter on private business and independent
labor. But today, more than a quarter of Cuba's workforce is not
employed by the state.

Soldevilla has been working as a freelance producer, using his
international contacts and his skills to get contracts with foreign
clients. He has done casting work for the U.S. reality TV show "House
Hunters," something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago,
when Cubans were prohibited from having cellphones and going online was
all but impossible.

Poor Internet access is still a major headache, but Soldevilla can take
his laptop to a tourist hotel with WiFi when he needs to conduct
business. "I'm not earning as much as I did [in the Dominican Republic],
but the cost of living is a lot lower. And I'm happier here," he said.

Many of the repatriates, like Soldevilla, are returning from Europe and
Latin America. Cubans in the United States may be more reluctant to
return to the island because of their relatively high incomes. But
American economic sanctions also make it essentially illegal for any
U.S. resident to go to Cuba and run a business. And the ability to buy
property remains mostly restricted to Cubans who live on the island.

For Kelly Sánchez, the 2011 overhaul of Cuban real estate laws was the
biggest factor in her decision to give up a job as an advertising
executive in Spain and return to the Old Havana neighborhood of her
childhood.

The change meant that a Cuban could acquire a residence that could also
house a small business.

Sánchez bought a 200-year-old house in the city's historic quarter, and
she now operates it as a small hostel called Casa Vieja. The ground
floor has 15-foot ceilings and doubles as an art gallery; she has a bar
and dining room on the roof deck. Sánchez's rooms rent for about $40 a
night, and demand is so high that she said she's almost entirely booked
for 2016.

"It's insane," she said, referring both to the demand and the myriad
challenges of running such an operation in crowded, crumbling Old Havana.

When Sánchez left for Spain in 1998 as a 24-year-old, she was an
unemployed university graduate with an engineering degree and a
frustration that drove her to depression. "I was desperate to get out of
here," she said.

A professional career in Europe "is what I needed to grow up," she said.
"It made me the woman I am today - smarter, more confident, more
open-minded."

Like Sánchez, restaurant owner Estrada describes life abroad as a kind
of international business school, an education in capitalism. Estrada
said he has struggled with the training and management of his Cuban
employees, who he said still treat their jobs as if they work for a
government-run business. Pilfering is a problem, he grumbled, along with
tardiness and poor customer service skills.

Like other private restaurant owners here, Estrada said he prefers to
hire workers with no experience that he can train to his standards,
rather than hire employees who have picked up the bad habits of
state-run businesses.

"In Spain, workers take their jobs seriously," Estrada said. "They know
that if they don't, they'll be out on the street with nothing to eat."

Source: A flow of Cubans – going home - Americas - Stripes -
http://www.stripes.com/news/americas/a-flow-of-cubans-going-home-1.386908