Thanks to Rhys Patrick, Second Secretary in the British Embassy, Havana for this week’s blog.
Last month I visited Camaguey and Ciego de Avila, two provinces in central Cuba famous for their farming and stunning archipelagos. When British pirate Henry Morgan visited Camaguey in 1668 he sacked the city and locked the town leaders in the Cathedral until they revealed where the gold was hidden, which he then unsurprisingly ran off with. My visit to the ‘city of legends’ wasn’t as swashbuckling. I decided early on that I wouldn’t take any hostages nor wear an eye-patch. And my busy programme of meetings with local authorities, journalists and ‘cuentapropistas’ didn’t allow much time for looting. But I did make off with some great insights about the changes and challenges in the region.
In Camaguey, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I heard a lot about the importance of agriculture. The province is flat and fertile and there are more cows per capita in Camaguey than anywhere else in Cuba. This agricultural wealth has in turn spawned a dynamic biotechnology sector centred on farming and veterinary medicines which are also exported to Europe and Latin America. In Ciego de Avila, tourism is the economy’s bedrock. This is thanks to the spectacular islets in the north where there are 16 hotels with 5500 rooms – many owned by the military’s commercial arm Gaviota. The tourism boom has delivered huge economic benefits with new jobs, customers and infrastructure and the government plans to expand development four-fold by 2030. But in both provinces there are big questions about how to grow the economy beyond these sectors. None of the students I met at the University of Camaguey wanted to be farmers for example. A lot is riding on the slowly expanding private sector – there are about 35,000 cuentapropistas in the two regions combined – but it remains tiny and real progress will depend on major improvements to the business environment across the island.
Another reason for my visit to this part of Cuba was to deliver England football shirts, shorts and socks to local teams. I met with men’s and women’s teams in Camaguey and Ciego de Avila to handover the kit to Cuba’s future football stars and watch them train. The kits looked great and I hope they will help support the development of the global game in the heart of the island. Baseball is the national sport, but football is catching up and it is easy to find young Cubans kicking a football around in the streets or a park, or following their favourite European teams – normally Barcelona or Real Madrid (although I did see a Chelsea shirt in Camaguey!) – on TV. Cuba has a fantastic sporting history and I hope it won’t be long before we see the national men’s and women’s teams at the world cup!