By Alex Fernandez Fernandez
The world of business and sport seem to go hand in hand every day. However, in Cuba, whose economy urgently needs a rehabilitation along new paths, the private sector is taking incipient steps.
However, it is becoming more common to see illustrious entrepreneur athletes. We already know the cases of the Olympic champions, Mireya Luis, Dayron Robles or Javier Sotomayor. All fully linked to gastronomic services, of excellent acceptance among Cubans.
In the case of Luis, he has an Italian-style restaurant called “Las Tres Medallas”, while El Soto owns “Sport-Bar 2.45”.
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Among so much popularity, a figure not so well known but who did have a brutal talent that took him to the national soccer team at just 15 years old, is having an impact on business in the middle of 2022.
This is Leonel Duarte, owner of a MiPyme (new form of economic management approved by the island government in 2021 on micro, small and medium-sized companies), which he called Carne D’ Tres, this being the first with investment direct foreigner in Cuba.
According to the note of OnCubathis private business “will receive an injection of capital that would allow it to improve its infrastructure and create new facilities to reach the commercialization of some 130 tons of pork and its derivatives this year.”
Leonel is remembered among football fans in the country for the crowns won by the Ciego de Ávila team in the 2010 National Championship, but since 2005, when he was just 16 years old, he was a member of the Cuba team. He alternated benefits between the Sub-17 and the cast of Majors.
After retiring from the national team a decade ago, when he was not yet 25 years old, and following graduating from Foreign Languages at the University of Havana, he envisions other paths to make a living.
“At first, Carne D’Tres received the approval of the Avilanian government to promote the breeding, fattening and reproduction of animals with average genetics, but its managers identified greater opportunities with the reconversion of the business and thus became one of the almost 5,000 MSMEs that have received the green light to operate almost a year following this process began in the country”, the aforementioned source expanded.
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At the moment, Duarte expressed his aspirations for the management of his own animals, regarding which he expressed to the aforementioned medium:
“We intend to slaughter and market them, taking into account clean production with the use of biogas and the liquid feed plant that will allow us, with mixed feeds, imported feed and alternative feeds, to obtain an efficient production system and collaborate with the production of meat in the municipality, in the province and in the country”.
Well, the best of luck to Leonel Duarte; a striker with an athletic style and demeanor, with one of the best dribbles in recent years and who today looks to the world of the market.
*Duarte won the 2010 Caribbean Cup with the Cuban team and participated in the World Cup qualifiers and the Olympic qualifiers in 2008, as well as in the 2007 Gold Cup. In 39 appearances in official matches, he scored five goals.
