Chattanoogans with ties to Cuba weigh in on new era of diplomacy

Daniel Alcala, owner of Embargo 62, spends time in his restaurant on Monday.
Daniel Alcala, owner of Embargo 62, spends time in his restaurant on Monday.

Alabama company to make tractors in Cuba

A start-up tractor manufacturer based in Northwest Alabama and owned by a pair of former computer software innovators who took on IBM in the 1980s — and won — will be the first American company to make goods in Cuba in more than 50 years.Cleber LLC, owned by Horace Clemmons and Saul Berenthal, will produce tractors in Cuba for small-scale farming, beginning as early as this year, after getting approval from both the U.S. and the Cuban governments.“That’s what they need at this point in time,” said Clemmons, who lives in Paint Rock, roughly 22 miles west of Scottsboro in Jackson County, Ala.Read more of this story at bit.ly/1TOzLsG.

Daniel Alcala didn't stay in a hotel when he traveled to Cuba for the first time this month.

Instead, the 43-year-old son of Cuban immigrants elected to stay with a local family and immerse himself in the culture of a nation once again in American headlines.

Just two weeks before President Barack Obama's historic visit to the Caribbean nation, the Chattanooga resident spent seven days getting a personal look at the island that shaped his heritage and his business.

As the owner of Embargo 62, a Cuban restaurant and bar on the North Shore, and Ceniza, a soon-to-open Ooltewah restaurant that will serve Caribbean cuisine, the trip served both a professional and personal purpose.

And it left an impression.

"What I had learned and what I thought that Cuba was at this present time is not really what I saw," Alcala said Monday.

Alcala said he encountered locals suffering from long-standing financial hardships who are grateful the United States' relationship with Cuba is opening up.

"There are more tourists coming in, and not just from the United States," he said. "People from other countries have been going for years, but more of them are jumping on the bandwagon and going because they see, 'Hey, it's OK for the Americans to go, so it must be all right for us to go.'

"So more tourists are going now, and all that gets fed down the pipeline."

During his trip, which included time in Havana and in the rural region of Pinar Del Rio, Alcala recalled speaking with taxi drivers accustomed to making $20-30 per day who are now making $80-150 per day.

But Alcala understands both sides of the conversation surrounding the United States' increased diplomacy with a nation long-known for neglecting human rights.

He said his maternal great-grandfather owned one of the nation's largest sugar refineries and a bus company that ran some of the capitol city of Havana's most popular routes.

That, of course, was before dictator Fidel Castro came to power.

"When the revolution came and Fidel took over, they lost everything," Alcala said. "Everything was nationalized and Fidel took everything. My parents left in 1959, which is basically the year Fidel took over. My dad, he was a visionary and he kind of saw what was coming, and as soon as he was able to get out, they got out and left Cuba.

"So I have that whole side of the family that is totally against everything that's going on right now. I have a certain sentiment toward that because my family did suffer. Who knows what my life would have been like if that didn't happen and the revolution didn't take place."

Alcala said he is helping his 82-year-old mother renew her Cuban passport so she can return to the country one more time.

In the meantime, having Cuba in the news seems to be generating a buzz among people who want to try Cuban cuisine and cocktails at Embargo 62, he said.

Traveling to Cuba is more practical now than it has been in a long time, but there are some Chattanoogans who had the chance to visit Cuba before Obama began working to improve the United States' relationship with the nation in December 2014.

Ben Friberg's visa specified that his 2013 trip to Cuba was for athletic endeavors.

But the Chattanooga resident, known globally for his exotic paddling trips, took notice of the sights, sounds and people around him as he spent four days in Havana preparing to paddle board 118 miles across the ocean to Key West, Fla.

"It was very tricky to go to Cuba at that point in time," Friberg said Monday while eating breakfast at Aretha Frankensteins. " It was a time capsule to go and see that place. It was preserved exactly how it was left [decades] ago. It's very close to home, but it seems like a world away."

Also read

* Must-see TV: Cubans marvel at rare questioning of Castro* Cooper: Waiting for U.S. upside in Cuba* Obama, Castro lay bare tensions on embargo, human rights

As the United States and Cuba enter a more communicative relationship and more Americans begin traveling to the nation, Friberg said he anticipates western investment to, for better or worse, alter the nation's feel in some ways.

"But what it will be amazing for is the Cuban people, because they need the tourist dollars coming from our country," he said. "They have so many restrictions on them, so I think that it's going to be a wonderful opportunity for them."

Richard Becherer, who holds the Clarence E. Harris Chair of Excellence in Business and Entrepreneurship at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, traveled to Cuba in 2012 to study the entrepreneurial economy within the country's centralized economy.

Becherer said in an email that he used his experience from Cuba to express to UTC students what they take for granted in the U.S.

"I think more exposure and more visits will help the [Cuban] people to tell their story and raise what they expect from their government," he wrote. "This visit is a good first step if we do not ignore the oppression and we ask the [Cuban] government to reform. The carrot should be good relations with the U.S."

Contact staff writer David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.

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