Cuban clock maker keeps on ticking despite economic woes

Cuban watchmaker Ernesto Barrios saw an opportunity to make up for lost time two years ago after authorities lifted a ban on private companies that had been in place since shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. Taking advantage of the new regulations, he founded "Tiempo de Luz," the only business in Cuba, he said, dedicated to the production and sale of wristwatches, table and wall clocks assembled from discarded timepieces and recycled, locally available materials. "We're occupying an empty niche," the 41-year-old Barrios told Reuters on a recent tour of his Havana shop, where his employees assembled, with painstaking care, watches from pieces scavenged from old clocks and raw materials, woods, leather and natural fibers found on the Caribbean island.