Wealthy Florida businessmen, who export to Cuba, threw an 80th birthday party for Cuban President Fidel Castro’s elder brother Ramon on Monday.Between rum mojitos, daiquiris and the occasional cigar, the mostly Republican capitalist executives hobnobbed with Cuban Communist Party officials, hoping the winner of Tuesday’s Presidential polls will put an end to four decades of trade and travel restrictions against Cuba.‘‘It’s his 80th birthday. He is my best friend down here, and I thought I would do the right thing,’’ said John Parke Wright IV, a rancher from Naples, Florida. He sells cattle to Cuba and organised the dinner for Ramon, the farmer in the Castro family.More than a third of the 250 Americans attending this week’s annual trade fair in Havana are from Florida, the US state that stands to gain most from open trade with Cuba. While trade sanctions were eased in 2000 to allow the sale of food and agricultural products, the Bush administration has sought to undermine Castro with new travel restrictions and curbs on financial flows to Cuba. Bush appealed for Cuban-American votes in Miami on Sunday by pledging to keep up the pressure on Castro to free Cuba from the ‘‘tyrant.’’Parke Wright, a Republican, hopes the next US President will not only end sanctions but restore diplomatic ties with Havana broken off by the Eisenhower administration in 1961. — Reuters
