HAVANA: It could have been a county fair in the American heartland. Kay the cow mooed and Charlotte the pig grunted in pens sprinkled with sawdust. Visitors stuffed themselves with lemon meringue pie. American flags fluttered and Minnesota politicians pressed flesh.

But the VIP who bottle-fed a baby bison and came face to face with someone costumed as a California raisin was Cuban President Fidel Castro.

The almost surreal spectacle of Castro revelling in Americana unfolded on Thursday at the start of a US food fair in Havana. Nearly 300 US companies flocked here hoping to persuade Cuba to buy capitalist goodies ranging from corn flakes to frozen chicken nuggets, as allowed by an amendment to Washington’s four-decades-old trade embargo of its leftist nemesis.

James Cason, who heads the US Interests Section in Havana, has belittled the significance of the fair, the first major US commercial event here since the 1959 revolution. Cuba is a “Freddy the Freeloader” with a “Jurassic Park economy” that owes $11 billion to its trading partners and would love to saddle the United States in a similar fashion, Cason charged on Tuesday.

Touring the fair in an exhibition hall on Thursday, a smiling Castro offered to bet Cason $100 million that Cuba would repay US lenders if his country could buy from America companies on credit. Under the trade embargo amendment, Cuba can buy food from the United States only with upfront cash.

Strolling with Midwestern politicians, including Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, past booths proffering Georgia peanuts and New York apples, the navy-suited Castro revelled in US vendors’ attention. Their profuse thanks to him for holding the fair underscored the growing gulf between the American business community and Washington over the embargo.

Clearly aware of the flashing cameras, Castro bottle-fed Clarke, a fuzzy baby bison, and chatted up the animal’s keepers, two Minnesota farm boys with cornsilk-blond crew cuts and cornflower-blue eyes.

Cuba has bought $140 million in food from the United States under the two-year-old embargo loophole, and it hopes to nearly double that amount in the coming year. If it could use credit, Cuba would buy up to 70 per cent of its food imports, anticipated to soon total $1.4 billion annually, from the United States, Cuban officials said.—Dawn/The LAT-W.P News Service (c) The Washington Post.