Tonito Ring Ring was a Latin-looking boy with a dial for a belly and a target on his head. In the 1950s, he was the cartoon mascot of the Cuban Telephone Company, then owned by American firm International Telephone & Telegraph. When the Revolution came in 1959, workers at company headquarters in Havana came looking for him. They tore Tonito down from the wall, thrust him into a coffin, walked him down Calle Aguila to the Malecon, and tossed him into the sea. The Communists, meanwhile, seized the entire Yanqui phone company and, in the ensuring three years, confiscated $1.6-billion worth of U.S property across the island.
Almost six decades later, the United States is intent on making the Cubans pay. Literally.
Now the property of the state-run phone monopoly ETECSA, the telephone company is just one of roughly 6,000 confiscated assets, estimated to be worth a total of more than $7-billion, to which American firms and citizens hold claims. If the Cubans want the United States to lift its gruelling economic embargo – now a possibility, after U.S. President Barack Obama announced the re-establishment of diplomatic relations in December – they’re going to have to address the thorny issue of compensation. With Mr. Obama’s presidency winding down, and Cuba’s economy suffering even more than usual thanks to the woes of petro patron Venezuela, pressure is beginning to build to tackle the elephant in the room.
via As Cuba-U.S. relations thaw, the thorny matter of property disputes heats up – The Globe and Mail.
