Newsgroups: soc.culture.mexican
From: DowJones@andrew.cmu.edu
Subject: Benetton's First Cuban Boutique Lures Foreigners Only
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 06:01:53 -0500 

  

  By Jose de Cordoba and Lisa Bannon  

  Benetton Group SpA, the Italian fashion company, opened the first of
almost a dozen planned boutiques in Cuba, stepping immediately into a
controversy, The Wall Street Journal reported.  

  Cuban-American groups expressed anger that the Benetton shops will
cater to tourists. Owned by the Cuban government, they will sell goods
only for dollars and thus be off-limits to most Cubans.  

  The first hard-cash shop, which opened Friday, is in a Havana hotel.
Laura Pollini, a company spokeswoman in Treviso, Italy, said Benetton
hopes to open, under license, a total of 10 United Colors of Benetton
boutiques by year end. The stores, to be located in tourist areas, will
sell Italian-produced merchandise.  

  Because it is a criminal offense in Cuba to possess foreign currency,
most Cubans won't be able to shop in the Benetton stores. In fact, they
will be risking prison if they even show up with dollars to do so.  

  "We operate in 108 countries and don't intend to discriminate against
Cuba," said Luciano Benetton, the company's managing director, who met
with Fidel Castro in Havana on Friday. "We also have plans to open a
shop in North Korea next spring," Benetton said in a statement released
in New York by his firm's unit there.  

  Benetton's announcement angered Cuban exiles in the U.S. About 50 young
Cuban-Americans picketed a Benetton store at a Miami mall, saying they
would burn their Benetton clothes. "It's an outrage," said Frank Calson
of Freedom House, a New York-based human rights and policy organization.
"At a time when there's great suffering in Cuba, it's a terrible thing
for a company to open up stores where Cubans aren't allowed."  

  Joe Garcia, a spokesman for the Cuban American National Foundation,
a powerful Miami lobbying group, said additional protests are planned
in Los Angeles and New York as well as in Spain and Venezuela, where
the foundation has chapters.  

  Benetton's New York spokesman said such actions would be "regrettable."
Noting that the company was heavily involved in the former Soviet bloc
before its collapse, he said Benetton believes in the potential of business
to bring change to Cuba.  

  "I would say that Benetton's entrance into Cuba is long-term and not
short-term," the spokesman said. "The current condition that the store
only accepts hard currency is only the present, and not what we have
in mind for the future."  

  Benetton has provoked debate many times before, mostly because of its
advertisements that sometimes focus at least as much on racial and religious
issues, AIDS and other world problems as on clothes.  

  For the present, the main market for the Cuban outlets will be foreign
tourists. The hope is that they can help stave off economic collapse
caused by Cuba's loss of Soviet subsidies and markets. Cuban officials
say the island was visited by 424,000 foreign tourists in 1991 and more
than 500,000 in 1992, mostly from Europe and Canada. Some analysts question
those numbers, however, saying that one Havana-based European hotelier
said the number of tourists in the first half of 1992 fell 60% from a
year earlier.  

  Because of Washington's three-decade-long economic embargo, U.S. tourists
aren't officially allowed to visit Cuba, although they can get there
via Canada or Mexico.  

  Benetton is also considering opening a factory to produce shoes and
T-shirts in Cuba through a joint venture with a state agency. "The discussions
are still very preliminary, and the factory stage of the deal would likely
happen far in the future," Pollini said.   
    6 01 AM
Newsgroups: soc.culture.mexican