Cuba — Economic Challenges
For the blog today, I thought I would incorporate some of the student reflections about one of our first speakers. We had a terrific briefing on the economy from Guilio Ricci, an economics professor at the University of Havana.
From Max Rabkin:
Spending a week in Havana was an eye-opening experience for many reasons. I expected good food, friendly people and time-capsule-like architecture, and was not disappointed with any of those. However, I was most intrigued with how the country and the Castro government was handling the introduction of market reforms and resuming diplomatic relations with the United States.
Most fascinating was the talk with the economist from the University of Havana. I went into the trip expecting a heavy dose of Marxist-Leninist thought to permeate every discussion the group had, and although this was generally true, the economic lecture ended up being one of the fairest and provided the most realistic outlook for the Cuban economy and future enterprise prospects for the public.