By Pedro Pablo Morejon
HAVANA TIMES – I woke up on December 31 excitedly thinking about Hugo Puig, a Cuban small businessman who these days they call an entrepreneur or a self-employed person. A stroke of bad fortune had him born and living in Cuba – hard luck that among so many thousands of millions of souls waiting for a body, his had come to be reincarnated in this place, a highly unfavorable locale for investing effort and capital.
Nonetheless, perhaps without knowing it, his personal flag is that immortal phrase from Ernest Hemingway’s short novel The Old Man and the Sea: “Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” So here, in one of the anti-market meccas of the world, he has built his business, accompanied by a first-class team.
Like all good businesspeople, his goals aren’t limited to his financial returns. He wants to rise above, leave a trace of love in the world. Hugo has demonstrated that he deserves it – he’s a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy, the type of person that makes you believe, once more, that there’s hope for Cuba.
From early on, a desire burned in him: to provide