With the U.S. and Cuba moving to normalize relations and perhaps end a half-century trade embargo, the impoverished Caribbean nation can afford to pay Americans whose assets it nationalized after the 1959 revolution maybe 2 percent of the value of the seized property.
That’s why Cuban and U.S. negotiators are likely to search for other ways to compensate companies including Coca-Cola Co., which lost $27 million in machinery and real estate, and individuals such as Carolyn Chester, whose family lost an 80-acre farm on what was then known as the Isle of Pines.
