Hugo Cancio Morua

Hugo Cancio is an American businessman and political activist of Cuban descent. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Fuego Enterprises, a holding company active in media and entertainment, telecommunications, travel, and real estate in both Cuba and the United States, which conducts business with the Cuban government.

Early Life
Hugo Cancio was born in 1964 in Cuba. His father, Miguel Cancio, was a member of Los Zafiros, a Cuban musical group. His mother, Mónica Morúa, was a singer under the stage name Mónica Leticia.

His parents divorced and his mother remarried. He has a sister. He was educated at a boarding school in Matanzas. Prior to that, in 1977-1978, he received a scholarship to a rural school located in Jaguey Grande called "José Alfredo Sosa Morales" from which he had to be withdrawn by his mother in less than a year due to asthma attacks he experienced. At that time he lived in Varadero, appeared to be a young man of financial means, was calm and discreet; he expressed no political position. However, he was expelled after telling an anti-Castro joke.

With his mother, Cancio emigrated to the United States via the Mariel boatlift in 1980. He pretended to the Cuban government that he was homosexual in order to be granted an exit permit.

They settled in Miami Beach, where Cancio attended Miami Beach Senior High School. Meanwhile, his father, who was fired from his job in the Cuban Ministry of Culture when his son left Cuba, emigrated to the United States as a political refugee in 1993.

Career
Cancio is the founder and chief executive officer of Fuego Enterprises, known as Cuba Business Development Group until October 2012, a diversified holding company active in media and entertainment, telecommunications, travel, and real estate in both Cuba and the United States. It trades publicly on OTC Markets Group. Its largest shareholder is Thomas J. Herzfeld.

Cancio began his career working as a busboy in a kosher restaurant in Miami and quickly entered the automobile dealership industry. In the 1990s, he founded Viajes a Cuba, a travel company for Americans visiting Cuba, after receiving a license to conduct business in Cuba from the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

In 1997, he produced a documentary about his father's group, Zafiros: Blue Madness. The film won the People's Choice Award at the 1997 Havana Film Festival.

Cancio later worked as a music promoter. He owns the 1962 live recordings of The Beatles. However, his acquisition of those rights was challenged by a lawsuit from Apple Corps in 2008, on the grounds that the group never gave their consent for the recordings in the first place; subsequently, the two entities reached an amicable settlement. Additionally, he has represented Cuban artists such as Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Los Van Van, and NG La Banda when they performed in the United States.

Since 2012, Cancio has published two bilingual magazines, OnCuba and ART OnCuba, which are sold in the United States and Cuba. OnCuba appears in El Paquete Semanal. He also publishes a real estate magazine and an art magazine called Art On Cuba.

Cancio founded OnCuba Travel, which offers guided tours of Havana to American tourists, in 2012. He is also the owner of MAScell, a Miami-based company that sells prepaid mobile phone cards in Cuba. Meanwhile, in 2013, Fuego Enterprises acquired 51% of The Americas Group Cuba Business Enterprise, a Cuban-American business consulting company founded by Howard Glicken.

Political Activism
Cancio was barred from entering Cuba for one year in 2003 for his support of the Cuban dissident movement. However, he is an admirer of Fidel Castro's "tenacity," including his role in the Cuban Revolution. He has been accused of being a communist, due to the business he maintains with the Cuban regime and his ties with its supporters.

Cancio is a longtime opponent of the United States embargo against Cuba. During the George W. Bush presidency, he founded Cambio Cubano, an anti-embargo organization. Shortly after the election of President Barack Obama, he visited Cuba and met with an official from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba to promote Cuban culture in the United States. In 2013, along with 60 Cuban Americans, he signed an open letter addressed to President Barack Obama to remove Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, in contradiction with opinions expressed by several Cuban-American congressmen from South Florida. Meanwhile, he met with Cuban government officials and paved the way for the Cuban-American thaw, from which he personally benefited.

Personal Life
Cancio has three daughters and resides in Miami, Florida.