Cubatrade-June-Digital

Economic development head Andy Icken: We are a trading city
Senior BP counsel Yuliya Marcer: Legal systems need to converge
Partnership CEO Bob Harvey: Houston needs to be global
Texas Medical Center CEO William McKeon: Time to collabrate
cated manufacturing, aerospace firms, and
medical research, the jobs that needed
filling were for engineers, scientists, and
doctors. “These were filled by Asians and
Africans with much higher levels of education
than Anglos,” says Klineberg. Even
the great stream of Latin immigration,
much of it looking for blue-collar jobs
requiring little education, brought with it
an educated elite.
Bob Harvey, president and CEO of
the Greater Houston Partnership, sites a
Brookings Institution report that identifies
19 “knowledge capitals” around the world,
recognized for innovative products and
services, of which Houston is one. “You
are a seeing a migration of talent to these
knowledge centers,” he says. “Cities need
to lose their provincial nature to be more
global, to be more diverse, to have the
personal connections between their city
and cities around the world.”
It is that combination of intellectual
capital and international reach that
international metropolis and population.
“Houston was an international city early
on because of oil and the ship channel.
But it was Anglos here doing the commerce,”
says Richard Klineberg, a professor
at Houston’s Rice University and
founding director of the Kinder Institute
for Urban Research.
For 36 years, Klineberg has researched
Houston’s demographics. His
conclusion: “Houston is now the most
diverse city in America. All of America
will look like Houston looks today in 25
years.”
While this is partly the result of
geography, what really created Houston’s
international community was a shift in
the economy, says Klineberg. “No one
planned it, no one expected it,” but in the
wake of the 1982 collapse of the oil boom
“all the growth was propelled by an influx
[of immigrants] from around the world.”
With Houston augmenting energy
production and shipping with sophistimakes
Houston such a potent potential
trade and investment partner with Cuba.
Houston also shares deep historical bonds
with the island.
“The connection between the Gulf
of Mexico and Cuba since colonial times
are very important. Don’t forget that the
Spanish conquest of Mexico was launched
from Cuba, and that Texas used to be part
of Mexico,” says Dr. Luis Duno-Gottberg,
chair of the Department of Spanish,
Portuguese and Latin American Studies
at Rice University. “People think of us as
apart from the Caribbean but the connections
historically are tremendous. Before
Cuba existed as Cuba, and Mexico as
Mexico, this area was connected.”
Today that connection is being tangibly
tightened. Among the few air routes
to Cuba outside of Florida and New
York approved by the U.S. Department of
Transportation is a weekly United Airlines
flight between Houston and Havana. That
route has done so well that United has
Our diversity is our strength, and opening doors
to Cuba is another way to expand what is already
a richly diverse community
applied to expand to daily service.
“That route is performing exactly as
we expected,” says Darrin Hall, United’s
Houston-based director of corporate and
government affairs. “We are pleased with
both the United service out of Houston and
Newark, and in Houston so much as that
we are looking to expand United’s offering.”
Altogether, United offers 91 daily
non-stop flights to 52 destinations in Latin
America and the Caribbean. “Houston
will be an important gateway for service to
Havana, because it will directly connect 20
markets across the central U.S. with just
one stop,” says Hall.
William McKeon, CEO of Texas Medical Center
VALUE-ADDED MEDICAL RESEARCH
Like the over-sized ambitions of the Port
of Houston, the Texas Medical Center
began with a big vision—118 acres purchased
in 1945, initially for the construction
of a 1,000-bed Naval hospital. Today
it is home to 54 medical institutions
that include 21 hospitals, eight research
institutions, and four medical schools.
TMC receives more than 3,000 patients
a day and more than eight million a year,
including 18,000 international patients.
TMC staff, including then CEO Dr.
Robert Robbins, visited Cuba with Mayor
Turner, and since then the center's doctors
and researchers have been exploring ways
of collaborating with Cuba’s health system
and biopharmaceutical institutions.
“The medical center has been here
for 70 years and it is now the biggest
medical center in the world,” says William
McKeon, TMC’s new CEO and an
advocate of exploring relations with Cuba.
“We have a highly diverse, educated talent
base. Our diversity is our strength, and
opening doors to Cuba is another way to
expand what is already a richly diverse
community.”
The TMC expands by leasing acreage
to new institutions for $1 a year; these
new schools, hospitals, or research labs
become members of the center and
subsequently share in maintenance fees
for things like road maintenance, lighting
and security. “Whereas most cities would
have fragmented hospitals across a major
metropolis, here we have physicians in
oncology, neurology, orthopedics, and so
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