Translating Cuba – English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island

The Cuban Regime Responds to the Psychological Warfare of the U.S. With Feigned Calm

The state-run ‘Cubadebate’ describes certain media outlets as part of the “propaganda apparatus” serving the Trump Administration

Visit of a Russian frigate to Havana in July 2024, the kind of encounter that the U.S. considers intolerable. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, May 19, 2026 — The new U.S. sanctions have no practical effect on those targeted, Miguel Díaz-Canel mocked in a post published early Tuesday morning. “Among the leadership of our Party, State, Government, and military institutions, no one has assets or property to protect under U.S. jurisdiction. The U.S. Government knows this perfectly well,” the Cuban leader emphasized on his X account.

In his view, this is so clear that “there is not even any evidence to present,” but “the anti-Cuban rhetoric of hatred tries to make people believe such evidence exists in order to justify the escalation of its total economic war,” Díaz-Canel said. The Cuban president thus downplayed the new measure by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac), which on Monday added eleven senior political and military officials from the Island to its sanctions list, including three ministers.

The leader believes that the decision, since it has no real implications, is instead part of a series of measures aimed at increasing pressure on the authorities through threats against third parties. “The executive order that persecutes and threatens third parties wishing to sell fuel to Cuba, and that extraterritorializes the embargo to unprecedented levels, penalizing companies that want to invest in Cuba or simply provide us with basic goods such as food, medicine, hygiene products, or others, is immoral, illegal, and criminal,” he added.

“The executive order that persecutes and threatens third parties wishing to sell fuel to Cuba, and that extraterritorializes the embargo to unprecedented levels, penalizing companies that want to invest in Cuba is immoral, illegal and criminal”

Díaz-Canel states that his Government will continue “denouncing, in the strongest and most forceful way, the genocidal siege that seeks to strangle our people,” who are being subjected to an “act of genocide that must be condemned by international organizations,” while also calling for its “promoters” to be prosecuted “criminally.”

That denunciation campaign is consistently carried out by Cubadebate, which for weeks has lamented that U.S. media outlets echo leaks as another element of pressure on the regime. This Tuesday, in one of the digital outlet’s increasingly frequent analyses of the role of the press, it focused on publications by Axios, which since February has been leaking information from State Department sources: from the secret talks revealed in February — and admitted by the Cuban Government a month later — to the most recent reports from this very weekend about the alleged purchase of drones, without overlooking the visit of CIA director John Ratcliffe to Havana.

Cubadebate believes that Axios helps shift the debate from the political to the military sphere, so that “the narrative no longer revolves around dialogue between States, but around communication directed toward those whom the U.S. considers the ‘real power.’” The state-run outlet analyzed, using the Zeeschuimer tool (for data capture), the 1,642 reactions generated on social media by the latest Axios article and concluded that they fall into several groups. The largest group sees the U.S. outlet as a “State propaganda apparatus,” accounting for 32% of comments.

They are followed by those expressing distrust toward the Trump Administration, with 26%; those who believe Cuba is the true party under threat and has the right to defend itself, 22%; those who think the groundwork is being laid for an attack on the Island, 12%; and, as a minority group at 8%, those who fear Cuba may indeed pose a threat. Cubadebate admits that comments may sometimes contain one or several premises and that these are not mutually exclusive, although it does not mention that a common trend on social media is to respond critically to what one dislikes and justify it, while support tends to be more passive and limited to a simple “like.”

Be that as it may, the scenario in Cuba is so open and generates so much debate that articles in the U.S. press appear almost daily, although none can determine what will happen. This Monday, Politico published a column by correspondent Nahal Toosi, of Iranian origin and an expert in international relations, in which the reporter argues that the idea of a military attack on the Island is now more likely than months ago, since the Trump Administration sees no progress in a sanctions strategy it had considered capable of producing quick results.

“The initial idea regarding Cuba was that the leadership was weak and that the combination of intensified sanctions enforcement, an oil blockade, and U.S. military victories in Venezuela and Iran would scare Cubans into making a deal. Now, the Iran situation has gone off course and the Cubans are proving much tougher than initially thought. So military action is more on the table than before,” said one official involved in the discussions.

Toosi’s source maintains that the Cuban regime is more monolithic than expected and not even aware of the severity of the economic situation. “They respond to U.S. pressure by offering ideas such as allowing foreign investment in hotels when their real problems are structural, including their crumbling electrical grid,” the source emphasized.

The correspondent also states that Trump might gain little domestically from such a move, since the strongest enthusiasts of military action are already among his supporters

Although the Pentagon continues drafting possible plans, nothing has been decided. A former White House official with extensive knowledge of Cuba warned that the popular support the regime may still retain should not be underestimated and that things may not be so simple. “There are true believers there,” he said. The correspondent also notes that Trump might gain little domestically from such a move, since the strongest supporters of military action are already among his base. Nevertheless, the pressure continues unabated, as reflected in the constant stream of related news.

The situation will continue tomorrow, when the formal indictment against Raúl Castro for the 1996 shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes is expected to be announced. This Monday, the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council published a report examining possible scenarios arising from the situation, highlighting its firm conviction that Castro will not be arrested, unlike what occurred with Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

“The United States Department of Defense will not carry out an operation to extract Raúl Castro from the Republic of Cuba,” they state, adding that the most likely outcome is that the general will die at home. “The Trump-Vance Administration will not condition Cuba’s commercial, economic, financial, military, political, and social reintegration on the extradition of Raúl Castro. They will request it, but they will not enforce it. Therefore, the indictment will be performative,” the document adds. In summary, Washington continues to prioritize psychological warfare.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.

Havana Chronicles: Along Carlos III Street and Towards Ethiopia

Without internet, without public transport, and with appliances destroyed, Havana seems to be returning to its harshest origins.

The Ministry of Domestic Trade has a Knowledge Management Center. What kind of information will be stored there? / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, Yoani Sánchez, May 18, 2026 — “You have to go straight on Carlos III,” a weary-looking state employee tells me when I ask for directions to shop that repairs electric pressure cookers. With no internet on cell phones and phone calls hampered, people have returned to using the most reliable “street map”: asking around. On the wide avenue that runs through Central Havana, that’s easy, because there’s always some activity. The difficult part is distinguishing when someone answers with just anything, without knowing, and when they actually have reliable information.

While I make my way toward Reina Street, a señora, sitting in a doorway tells me she has “Alprazolam, the good stuff,” a powerful benzodiazepine that sells in this city as if it was candy for children. An old man, who has placed some broken objects on the sidewalk to attract customers, gives me further directions, and a stray dog keeps glancing at the vendor selling bread and suckling pig, stationed with his cart on a corner, begging him to throw at least a scrap of skin.

Carlos III Avenue has become a strip of makeshift stalls. The softdrink bottling plant that fascinated me with its sounds in my childhood is closed. The garden of the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, which I loved to wander through, has been fenced off for decades. The cultural center where I learned to draw and first stepped onto a stage barely plans any activities. But the worst is the Plaza, reconverted into a market in dollars as devoid of goods as it is of customers. From its dark interior, neither voices nor laughter ever emerge.

The worst part is the Plaza, transformed into a dollar market as lacking in goods as it is in customers. / 14ymedio

I walk past a sign advertising the Domestic Trade Knowledge Management Center (CGC). “What kind of information will be stored there?” I wonder. Will they teach us how to share our experiences regarding how many peas we consumers in the rationed market get every few months? Will the innovation they promote have to do with how to make smaller, worse-quality bread each day to sell through the ration book? What will future scholars find when they open the archives of this institution? Will they be as empty as the shelves of the corner store in my neighborhood?

These days I’ve been thinking about the planes of Ethiopian. I’ve never been there, but my fascination with every drop of water, every glimmer of light, and every step I take must be very similar to that of those early Homo sapiens, surprised and frightened by so many things they didn’t understand. I chase clouds with my eyes to see if it’s going to rain in my neighborhood so I can fill a bucket, I calculate how long cooked beans will last without refrigeration, and I gauge where the shade will be when I set off on the long walk from anywhere in the city to my house.

I have seen scenes in the streets of Havana that I only knew from ancient history books when they described the harsh survival of our ancestors.

The cave attracts the cave. I’ve seen scenes in the streets of Havana that I only knew from ancient history books, when they described the harsh survival of our ancestors. A couple of young men hunting laurel pigeons with clubs and sacks, just to eat. A young woman preparing, with sacks and bags, a space in a tree trunk to spend the night. A family lighting firewood right in the street to finish cooking their lunch. We’re all becoming somewhat feral, a little wilder every day.

We haveve returned to the origins of basic survival. Given that the elements of modernity that surrounded us are becoming ever more unstable, the wild animal that we are at our core emerges: the reptile that dwells within us. We go out during the day to try to “solve” whatever problems we can. At night, we must avoid setting foot on the street: the sidewalks are dark, muggings are on the rise, and recreational options are so depleted that it’s not worth paying thousands of pesos for round-trip transportation to a private club or bar.

We’re all becoming a little more feral, a little wilder every day. / 14ymedio

The appliance repairman doesn’t mince words. “This rice cooker is beyond repair,” he tells me minutes after I finally find his small shop on Carlos III Street. A power surge after the electricity was restored sealed the fate of a pot we’d bought more than three decades ago, when my son was born. “It lasted quite a while,” I tell myself, and I leave it for spare parts with the busy entrepreneur, who already has a long line of customers. The blackouts leave a trail of victims in their wake: deep fryers, coffee makers, and pressure cookers that perish from “excessive current” when the power returns.

With my hands now free, I continue along Reina Street to seek the almendrón taxi stand at Fraternity Park. I hope that one day these people will have their own routes with comfortable and efficient buses that run throughout the city. If they’ve managed to create the most effective way to get around Havana under the worst conditions, they deserve to move up. With inspectors harassing them, police demanding ever-larger bribes, fuel shortages, and the old vehicles from the mid-20th century that they drive, the boteros have escaped the clutches of centralism. Many passengers complain about their prices, but we should be grateful that they exist.

You Havana residents are now experiencing what we have been suffering for years.

I climb into the “pisicorre,” an old Willys Jeep painted canary yellow. The young man who sits next to me is from Bejucal, a small town in what is now the province of Mayabeque, once famous for its brass bands. “You Havana residents are now experiencing what we’ve been suffering for years,” he tells me bluntly. “I can’t remember the last time I came home to electricity,” adds the man, who claims to be one of the few in his community who still commutes to the Cuban capital every day for work.

The scene he describes is depressing. “My wife has become an expert at lighting the charcoal for cooking, and many nights we take turns fanning the girls [ages five and eight]” so they don’t get bitten so much by the mosquitoes. What happens in his house is replicated throughout the town, and Bejucal “has become empty because those who didn’t leave through the Darién Gap left under the Law of Grandchildren.” I try to imagine what that place, which dazzled me with its festive rivalry between La Ceiba de Plata and La Espina de Oro, must be like at night, but I can’t quite picture it.

I arrive at my destination. I pass by Estancia Street to buy some basil. The vendor wraps the small bunch in a newspaper. The main headline is about the 2026 Economic and Social Program. Although only a few days have passed since its publication, the phrase seems like something from a distant past, when the State believed it had control over the present and future of every Cuban.

The reptile inside me stirs. It has heard the hum of the Ministry of Transportation’s generator. It’s the signal for the blackout, and it knows it will have to climb 14 flights of stairs. At the 10th floor, I close my eyes, hold onto the handrail, and imagine climbing a tree, crooked and with beautiful foliage, somewhere in the Ethiopian plains.

Previous Havana Chronicles:

Sleeping Is Also a Privilege in Havana

A Desperate Plea in the Middle of the Dark Havana Night: ‘Light!’

The Refuse of Disenchantment

Under a Picture-Postcard Blue Sky, the Country is Crumbling

Fatigue Barely Allows One to Enjoy the ‘Lights On’ in Havana

Dollars, the Classic Card, and a Havana Without Tourists

A Journey Through the Lost Names of Havana

The Shipwreck of a Ship Called “Cuba”

Havana Seen From ‘The Control Tower’

In Havana, the Only Ones Who Move Are the Mosquitoes

Reina, the Stately Street Where Garbage is Sold

Searching for Light Through the Deserted Streets of Havana

The Death Throes of ‘Granma’, the Mouthpiece of a Regime Cornered by Crisis

The Anxiety of the Disconnected Cuban

One Mella, Three Mellas, Life in Cuba Is Measured in Thousands of Pesos

It Is Forbidden To Leave Home in Cuba Today Because It Is a “Counter-Revolutionary Day”

Vedado, the Heart of Havana’s Nightlife, Is Now Converted Into a Desert

Havana, in Critical Condition

______________________

The Suspension of Service by CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd Affects 60% of Cuba’s Maritime Traffic

The decision by the French and German shipping companies is a consequence of new U.S. sanctions and will mainly affect trade with China

The decision will affect maritime trade with the entire world. / TC Mariel

14ymedio, Madrid, May 18, 2026 — International shipping companies CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd, French and German respectively, officially confirmed this Sunday the suspension of their shipments to and from Cuba. The information had unofficially emerged last Friday, when sources from both companies informed the Spanish agency EFE, and according to estimates by two experts in a Reuters report, it could mean the loss of 60% of maritime traffic for the Island.

“Following the U.S. decree issued on May 1, CMA CGM has decided to suspend its bookings to and from Cuba until further notice,” the French company said in a statement distributed by email this Sunday. The shipping company indicated that it is closely monitoring the situation and will adapt its decisions to current regulations.

The German company Hapag-Lloyd did the same, stating through a spokesperson that the suspension was due to “the compliance risks associated with the U.S. president’s May 1 decree.”

Specialists also point to Northern Europe and the Mediterranean as heavily affected by the suspension of these shipments

The transport of goods from China would be the most affected by the order, according to sources consulted by Reuters, which warned of the enormous drop in transactions. In a context of generalized shortages such as the one Cuba is experiencing, combined with the oil blockade, the risk is enormous. Specialists also point to Northern Europe and the Mediterranean as heavily affected by the suspension of these shipments, although “all global maritime transport to Cuba would be affected.” According to data from continue reading

the National Office of Statistics and Information, in 2024 — the latest year with complete data — international maritime trade totaled 62.3 million tons.

The decree signed by Trump on May 1 expanded U.S. sanctions on trade with Cuba to include “any foreign person” operating in the sectors of “energy, defense and related materials, metals and mining, financial services or security of the Cuban economy, or any other sector of the Cuban economy.”

Barely a week later came the departure of the Canadian mining company Sherritt International, which had been present on the Island for the past three decades, both in nickel and copper mining operations and in Energás wells in northern Cuba. The company made the decision, which also involved the departure of three board executives, out of fear of being placed on the SDN (Specially Designated Nationals) list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Treasury Department, a directory that includes sanctioned individuals, companies, or vessels, implying financial blocking and prohibiting Americans from doing business with them.

The sanctions will begin to be applied on June 5, which is why most companies doing business in Cuba are currently evaluating the situation. “No banking entity with a presence or interests in the United States will want to assume the risk of intermediating payments involving a designated [by the United States] party, regardless of the nationality of its client,” said Ignacio Aparicio, managing partner of the law firm Andersen and head of Cuban affairs, consulted by the newspaper El País for a report — similar to one published days earlier by ABC — evaluating the impact on Spanish companies.

According to the report, Meliá, which is under close scrutiny because of its extensive ties with the State, for which it manages 34 hotel establishments, remains silent “due to the high level of uncertainty, although they consider that their activity is not initially included within the five affected sectors.” Although the United States pointed to the specifically mentioned areas, it also refers, in any case, to any sector of the economy.

“Cuba’s Foreign Investment Law, enacted in 2014, establishes a joint venture framework that prevents unilateral withdrawal. Any divestment would in most cases require the approval of the Cuban State”

An anonymous businessman contacted for the report believes the sanctions are a clear warning to leave Cuba. “You can only do business with Gaesa [the military conglomerate that controls the country’s economy], which also has not paid its bills for some time. And now, if the United States discovers that you do business with a Gaesa company, it can fine you,” he argued. The Madrid-based newspaper estimates Spanish presence at more than 60 operations, especially in the tobacco industry, financial services, and wholesale trade, representing investments totaling 442 million euros. In addition, there are 70 hotel management contracts between Gaesa and companies such as Meliá and Iberostar, as well as Roc, Barceló, Valentín, NH, Blau, Axel, and Sirenis.

However, Aparicio warns of one thing. “Cuba’s Foreign Investment Law, enacted in 2014, establishes a joint venture framework that prevents unilateral withdrawal. Any divestment would in most cases require the approval of the Cuban State, turning the process into a prolonged and potentially costly negotiation.” In his view, the most likely outcome is “a slowdown in new investments, corporate adjustments aimed at reducing direct exposure, the search for alternative currencies to the dollar, and greater generalized caution throughout the financial chain.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

Las Tunas Responds to Increase in Theft From Its Electrical System With ‘Chemical Traps’

After more than 11 crimes so far this year and thousands of residents affected in the province, authorities are intensifying security measures

Officials at the Yariguá transformer workshop in Las Tunas. / Facebook/Empresa Eléctrica de Las Tunas

14ymedio, Havana, May 18, 2026 — In Las Tunas, authorities have decided to strengthen security measures to prevent the theft of dielectric oil and transformer parts, in response to the rise in criminal activity in the province. In the municipality of Jesús Menéndez alone, 11 cases have been recorded so far this year, according to Anisley Santiesteban Velázquez, technical director of the province’s Electric Company, speaking to the state media Periódico 26.

The package of measures consists of reinforcing security at the 44 substations in the region considered “vulnerable.” It includes technical decisions such as repairing perimeter fences and installing nighttime lighting powered by solar panels, as well as increasing surveillance by assigning four security officers to each substation.

The most striking measure, and one the authorities themselves have publicized as a warning, is the installation of so-called “chemical traps.” This measure was not explained in detail “for security reasons,” although officials did say it is being carried out in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior.

Warnings published by the Las Tunas Electric Company describe these traps as “the presence of dangerous substances or protective mechanisms that may cause harm to those attempting unauthorized access.”

Official warnings describe these traps as “dangerous substances or protective mechanisms that may cause harm to those attempting unauthorized access”

According to international technical literature from Strategic Directions, the principle behind these traps consists of introducing unique tracers in microscopic quantities into the fluids. These markers allow chemical analysis or simple forensic tests to determine the illicit origin of lubricants and provide judicial evidence against theft and illegal distribution networks.

Warning published by the Las Tunas Electric Company. / Facebook/Empresa Eléctrica de Las Tunas

The repair of perimeter fences at the 44 substations responds to the deterioration and damage these structures had suffered, which facilitated illegal access. The installation of nighttime lighting seeks to prevent perpetrators from acting under cover of darkness. continue reading

Regarding the security officers, Santiesteban Velázquez told the press: “We have the possibility of hiring security and protection agents for the substations. We are taking advantage of this opportunity to call on anyone interested in participating,” although the technical director did not detail the conditions of the offer.

Scarcity, necessity, and the opportunities of a black market that pays what the State cannot guarantee have multiplied thefts of fuel and dielectric oil in recent years. These acts directly affect the population but also endanger the perpetrators themselves, who in some cases have been injured or killed during the theft.

“They are leaving several communities, several towns without electricity”

The Periódico 26 article cites as an example the case of 4,000 residents in the Las Tunas locality of Yariguá, who have remained without electricity for four days due to these thefts, compounded by the national electricity generation deficit. The technical director identified these crimes as one of the main causes of the disruptions: “They are leaving several communities, several towns without electricity,” he said, urging residents to organize themselves. “I call for a collective and popular effort to protect our substations.”

Since last April, the Cuban Government has intensified criminal prosecution for any damage related to the national electrical system, when Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz demanded a “heavy hand” against these crimes and increased efforts to combat the theft of fuel and dielectric oil from transformers.

In that context, the state press emphasized, as Periódico 26 also recalled today, that crimes against the national electric power system are considered “sabotage,” classified in the Cuban Penal Code with penalties that, depending on the severity of the act and its consequences, can reach up to 30 years in prison, life imprisonment, or even the death penalty.

This same Monday, in the Havana municipality of Guanabacoa, the arrest of the shift supervisor of the photovoltaic park in the locality of Barreras was reported after he stole more than 40 meters of electrical cable. The theft paralyzed the operation of 24 solar panels, which for several hours stopped generating electricity for the national power grid.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

The Prosecutor’s Office Seeks Up to 13 Years in Prison for Three Women Who Protested a Blackout in Santiago de Cuba

Mileidis Maceo Quiñones, Edilkis León Giraudis and Oneida Quiñones are accused of public disorder and property damage

Pot-banging protests are becoming increasingly common on the Island, sometimes even during the daytime. / Facebook/Lara Crofs

14ymedio, Madrid, May 18, 2026 — Three women who were arrested at the end of 2024 in Palmarito de Cauto, Santiago de Cuba, are facing lengthy prison sentences for a protest that erupted during a prolonged blackout. Prosecutors are seeking 13 years in prison for Mileidis Maceo Quiñones, eight for Edilkis León Giraudis, and five years for Oneida Quiñones, all accused of public disorder and property damage.

The information was provided by Elba León Giraudis, sister of one of the accused, to Martí Noticias, which described the Prosecutor’s Office demand as “madness.” “They received the prosecutor’s request about a month and a half ago, but they still haven’t been notified of the trial date. They still haven’t set a date,” she said.

On November 15, 2024, tensions were running very high in eastern Cuba due to the slow restoration following the first major collapse of the national electrical system (SEN) on October 18, when a failure at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant in Matanzas caused the massive blackout that was the first of several.

“They received the prosecutor’s request about a month and a half ago, but they still haven’t been notified of the trial date. They still haven’t set a date”

The protest began “because of an all-day blackout, like every day when they cut the power at 7 in the morning, so many hours pass and they don’t turn it back on, and mothers have no way to cook for their children. It started in the area called Barrio Guano, which is a central street leading from that neighborhood toward downtown Palmarito, where the town square is, and then they turned back,” a local resident told the independent press at the time.

Dozens of people came out banging pots and demanding electricity. Police officers and State Security agents arrived at the scene, along with local government officials and Communist Party members, who unsuccessfully tried to calm the unrest. “The people became outraged because they were beating Mileidis’s mother, and people started throwing stones and shattered the window of an Operational Guard patrol car,” a witness told Martí Noticias at the time. Mileidis Maceo Quiñones, who is also an activist with the Patriotic Union of Cuba, and her mother were arrested, the latter being an elderly woman who is diabetic and disabled.

Edilkis León Giraudi and a first cousin of Maceo Quiñones, named Rafael, who was 17 years old at the time, were also arrested. The young man was detained a day later when authorities summoned several youths from the neighborhood to the local cultural center for questioning. Although charges were initially brought against him, they were ultimately dropped, reportedly because of his age.

Oneida Quiñones remains under house arrest awaiting trial, while Mileidis Maceo and Edilkis León are being held in the provincial prison. Their families have repeatedly tried to request more favorable measures so the women could remain at home until their responsibility is determined, but all attempts have failed, and they have now spent a year and a half imprisoned without knowing when the trial will take place.

The latest report published by the Madrid-based NGO Prisoners Defenders places the number of political prisoners in Cuba at 1,260

The latest report published by the Madrid-based NGO Prisoners Defenders places the number of political prisoners in Cuba at 1,260, ten more than the previous month. The same report, which warns of intensified repression, puts the number of people detained on the Island for protests against the regime at 2,048 from July 1, 2021 through the end of April 2026.

In addition, 23 prisoners were added to the list in the past month, although 13 people were released from prison, mostly due to completion of their sentences. Regarding the release of 51 prisoners announced by the Government in March and the “humanitarian pardon” of 2,010 inmates initiated in April, the organization states that both processes were marked by “deception, opacity, and the deliberate exclusion of the majority of political prisoners.”

In the first case, 27 of the 51 prisoners were political prisoners, while in the second process there were none, according to the organization’s records.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

The Exile Will Provide “The Necessary Capital To Rebuild Cuba,” Says Jorge Mas Santos

The businessman tells ‘El País’: “What Trump did with Venezuela was good for Venezuela, but it won’t work in Cuba, because it’s a failed state.”

Jorge Mas Santos, president of the Cuban American National Foundation and owner of Inter Miami. / X/Jorge Mas

14ymedio, Madrid, May 17, 2026 / Jorge Mas Santos, president of the Cuban American National Foundation and one of the most important figures in the Cuban exile community in Miami—son of the historic Jorge Mas Canosa —asserted in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País that “the capital needed to rebuild Cuba is not difficult to raise” and that the exile community will play a decisive role in any eventual transition. “If 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 billion dollars are needed, whatever the figure, it won’t be a problem,” he stated.

Mas Santos is known for his business and sports profile—he owns Inter Miami and is the main shareholder of MasTec—and as a leader in exile, he stated that he is aligned with Washington regarding a possible change on the island. “Everything is happening very quickly. We’re talking about months,” he said regarding the transition. “I estimate before the end of summer. Maybe not even then. We’ll see changes in weeks.”

He asserted that Cuba’s economic reconstruction must be preceded by the establishment of the rule of law. “We have to start practically from scratch, because the system and the political structure are not working,” he said, adding that there is capacity outside the island to contribute to the reconstruction. According to Mas, it would be “super easy” if there were a legal framework favorable to the market and foreign investment.

He argued that the Cuban exile community has sufficient capacity to finance this transformation and downplayed the economic challenge of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure: “With the exile community alone—and here I speak for myself, as I own a fairly large company—raising the necessary capital to rebuild Cuba is not difficult. Whether it takes 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80 billion, whatever the figure, it won’t be a problem.”

With the exile alone – and here I speak for myself, as I own a fairly large company – is not difficult to raise the capital needed to rebuild Cuba.

When questioned about the need for a US military intervention, he replied: “That is not for me to decide, or to opine on, but I believe that no option can be ruled out regarding what can or cannot be done in Cuba.”

Mas dismissed the possibility of a transition like Venezuela’s on the island. “What Trump did for Venezuela worked out well for Venezuela, but it won’t work for Cuba, because Cuba is a failed State,” he affirmed, arguing that continue reading

the island lacks functioning institutional structures or forces. “A complete change in leadership is needed, and that change can come from within.”

Although he also asserted that there are opposition figures comparable to María Corina Machado, these figures are not in Cuba because “they cannot speak to the people freely without endangering their lives.”

“The best thing that could happen to Castroism is for it to be buried like a dinosaur of the past,” he stated, endorsing the possible indictment of Raúl Castro for the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996, and asserting that his leadership has worked to bring justice to the families of those killed in that incident. “In any case, it’s a decision for the U.S. Department of Justice. We’ll see.”

The best thing that could happen to Castroism is for it to be buried like a dinosaur of the past.

The businessman and opposition leader also shared two documents with the Spanish media outlet outlining a possible transition on the island. The first, titled “Roadmap for a Prosperous, Democratic, and Free-Market Cuba,” proposes modernizing the banking system, eliminating income tax, offering tax breaks to companies with Cuban capital participation, and investing in sectors such as the pharmaceutical, military, and heavy industries.

The second is a draft Fundamental Law for Democratic Transition, written together with the Cuban-American Lawyers Association, with a Constitutional structure: 28 pages, 115 articles and nine transitional provisions.

Mas Santos explained that his “Fundamental Law for Democratic Transition” does not intend to restore pre-1959 Cuba, but rather to serve as a provisional legal framework to facilitate foreign investment, guarantee human rights, and lead the country toward free elections and a new Constitution.

The businessman defended the idea of a “technologically advanced” Cuba, with an open economy and a “democratic and pluralistic” political system, closely linked to the United States as its main market and economic partner. “I am talking about Cuba’s economic miracle, of a country unlike any of its past, a country that looks to the future,” he asserted.

I am talking about Cuba’s economic miracle, about a country unlike any of the past, a country that looks to the future.

“Those of us who are outside can contribute knowledge, effort, work, and economic resources,” he also said, referring to the role of exile in that transition, and stressed that this future goes beyond “building hotels and doing beach tourism,” pointing out the importance of rebuilding infrastructure, as well as civil power in the cities and “getting the health system working.”

When asked if he imagined a private healthcare system for Cuba, he replied that it would be “a combination of models”: that it could be a private system, but without cost to the citizen, suggesting that access to the healthcare system would be through vouchers paid for by the State. “We all know that the US [healthcare] system doesn’t necessarily work,” he stated.

He considered it “premature” to talk about Cuba as a possible 51st US state – an idea that Trump has recently floated regarding Venezuela: “I don’t rule it out, but the future has to be determined by the Cuban people. We have to give them that option and others through the ballot box.”

Finally, the businessman asserted that he had never seen the Cuban exile community as coordinated as it is now and mentioned his constant contacts with figures such as Rosa María Payá and Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, amidst what he considers “the final stretch” of Castroism.

Although he acknowledged that the exile community has experienced successive disappointments for decades – from the fall of the Soviet Union to the death of Fidel Castro – he stated that he had never perceived such an imminent change as the current one, an expectation he attributed directly to the leadership of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.

______________________

Cuban State Security Came Looking for Me

With all the problems one has, I prefer the secret police in their “bad guy” mode

Cuban military personnel (stock photo: CubaNet)

Cubanet, Luis Cino, Havana, 30 April 2026. — A few days ago, an official from State Security showed up at my house and, in no more than 15 minutes that we talked while standing at my door, augured for me–in varying tones–a future even darker than that which his fellow repressors predict when they have this type of conversation with me.

Imprisonment, misery, hardship, death, are what he predicted for me. As if I didn’t already know that I’ve had a little of each of those things for a long time. Even death, because even though I am blessed with good health, the life we Cubans live is no kind of life. As Solzhenitsyn wrote, “If in order to live it is necessary not to live, is it worth it?”

For starters, the Lieutenant warned me that “tolerance is over; with the threats from the yanquis, this is no time for your antics,” and he assured me that “if there is an attack, all counterrevolutionaries will be taken out of circulation.”

The official did not specify if the withdrawal from circulation–or disappearance (as they have called it to various oppositionists)–means that they will kill us. But it doesn’t matter, because if the official (who is convinced that the conflagration will occur within a matter of days) is to be believed, it is likely that before they have time to “pick me up preventively,” I would be one of the first victims of the US missiles.

“You’d better pray that Trump will not decide to attack us,” he told me, “because you, who live less than a couple of kilometers from the Western Army* General Command, won’t stand a chance when the bombs start continue reading

flying.”

After he got apocalyptic, he put his hand on my shoulder and counseled me to “get out of that independent journalism, because with your age and how skinny you are, you wouldn’t last in jail.” Right away he got into good-guy mode, as if he were a friend worrying because I smoke a lot, taking interest in my family problems and my future.

“Why didn’t you stay one of those times when you went to the US? What a mistake you made, what a blunder!” he lamented. “Here you have no future. You have one foot on the street and the other in jail. But, supposing that you don’t end up in jail, can you imagine when you get even older, your mind not working, and not being able to write anymore? What will you live on? At that point you won’t have the strength to work in construction or agriculture. And you don’t have a pension. I see you scavenging the dumpsters for cans and bottles.”

Then suddenly, as if illuminated from heaven, he gave me the solution to my problems: “You need to set up a business, become a self-employed worker.” Then he got indignant and before long called me an ingrate when I told him that, if I were to set up a business, then I really would be vulnerable–not as they officially or euphemistically refer to the disabled–but rather because I would be continuously subjected to the multi-thousand-peso fines imposed by the inspectors, who would sometimes be deployed by the very same State Security as a way to harass me without it seeming for political reasons.

He didn’t finish listening to me. He turned around, got on his Suzuki, cranked it up, and went back the way he came.

Truly, with all the problems one has, I prefer the secret police when they come in their bad-guy mode. When they mix their bullying with friendly advice, they make my head spin.

______________

Translator’s Notes:

*The Western Army of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces is headquartered in Havana and covers the strategic western end (the region closest to the US) of the Island.

Luis Cino biography: Born Havana, 1956. He worked as an English teacher, in construction, and in agriculture. He began working in independent journalism in 1998. He was a member of the editorial board of the magazine De Cuba and deputy director of Primavera Digital. A regular contributor to CubaNet since 2003, he writes about art, history, politics, and society. He lives in Arroyo Naranjo. He dreams of being able to dedicate himself fully and freely to writing fiction. He is passionate about good books, the sea, jazz, and blues.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Night-time Hunt for Megabytes in Matanzas Cuba

Near the telecommunications tower, the seafront promenade has become a kind of public video-call room

For months, this stretch of the Matanzas seafront promenade has become a kind of public video-call room / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Matanzas, Julio César Contreras, May 17, 2026 / At seven in the evening, when the sky over Matanzas Bay begins to turn grey and the cars thin out on the Vía Blanca, the Martí promenade fills with passers-by staring at their phone screens with the same intensity with which people once stared at the horizon. Some arrive alone, others as couples, others with small children running around near the granite benches while the adults try to catch an internet signal that appears and disappears like a mirage.

For months, this stretch of the Matanzas seafront promenade has become a kind of public video-call room, makeshift office and digital meeting point for those who, amid the blackouts and poor coverage, cannot get connected from home. The telecommunications tower in that part of the city is one of the few that still works, badly, when the connection goes down in the rest of the neighbourhoods.

When the browser on her phone starts going round and round in endless circles, Anays understands that, if she wants to speak to her sister, she will have to walk to the Martí promenade, about twelve blocks from where she lives, in the Versalles neighbourhood. “I have to do this every day at nightfall. If there’s no power, the coverage in my house drops almost completely. The problem is that at this time there is never any electricity,” complains the Matanzas resident, as she adjusts her mobile phone, looking for the exact angle where the video call will not freeze.

If there’s no power, the coverage in my house drops almost completely. The problem is that at this time there is never any electricity

The scene is repeated bench after bench. A woman in a pink dress anxiously checks the screen while a man beside her raises his head in resignation, as if expecting to find the signal floating among the clouds heavy with humidity. Farther on, beneath a flamboyant tree with spreading branches, a young man bent over his phone barely moves. His posture recalls the old fishermen of the shoreline, except that now no one is casting hooks into the sea, but trying to catch megabytes in the air.

As midnight approaches, dozens of people fight off mosquitoes around the antenna installed near the headquarters of the Municipal Committee of the Communist Party. “Even in this area the connection is sometimes terrible. Suddenly the call cuts off, the image freezes and, meanwhile, the minutes keep passing and the megabytes are being used up,” explains Anays, who still has not cooked the evening meal but gives priority continue reading

to the family conversation, even if that means going down and back up the hill in the dark every day.

In Matanzas, speaking over the internet has become a mixture of patience, strategy and physical endurance / 14ymedio

In Matanzas, speaking over the internet has become a mixture of patience, strategy and physical endurance. Some people leave home as soon as the power comes back in order to take advantage of the brief moment when the antennas work; others wait until the early hours because they say that “at that time you can browse a little better.” The younger ones know the exact spots where one extra bar of coverage comes in. “Here, close to the wall,” “under that palm tree,” “beside the bench,” are instructions heard as if they were coordinates.

“This country is getting worse all the time and now hepatitis is back,” says Tomás from another bench on the promenade while making a video call to his son, who has emigrated. “You sent me the top-up on Sunday and I only managed to receive it today, Monday. Now I’m going to try to save data as much as I can, because last month’s bonus was gone in less than a week.”

“This country is getting worse all the time and now hepatitis is back’

The man speaks loudly because there is a delay in the communication and he fears the call may drop at any moment. Near him, a dog sleeps on the cement while its owner stares fixedly at the phone connected to a pair of earphones. A few metres away, a young woman lights up her face with her mobile-phone screen in the growing gloom. The whole promenade seems to breathe to the rhythm of the intermittent connections.

“The truth is, I don’t know whether Etecsa has technical problems or is messing with us, but I get the impression that the amount of the top-up doesn’t match how long the mobile data is actually lasting,” Tomás insists. He then explains to his son that his wife could not come because it is her turn to look after the sick grandmother. “Don’t waste time calling me at home. Even if I climb onto the roof, I can’t hear you. Things are bad all over the city.”

The crisis makes no distinction between ages. “Your niece, to do a school assignment, spent more than an hour in Liberty Park downloading what she needed,” the man says, before again thanking him for the top-up sent from abroad. “If it weren’t for you, we’d be cut off.”

Getting connected on the Martí promenade is not a fashion, nor is it an excuse to look at the sea. Most people arrive exhausted after a day marked by blackouts, queues and heat. Yet, as night falls, the benches fill up again. The faces lit by the screens look like little modern bonfires in the middle of the darkness.

“I get the impression that the amount of the top-up doesn’t match how long the mobile data is actually lasting”

“My wife nearly fell the other day because of a pile of rubbish across the street after finishing the video call with our grandson,” says Eriberto, while making sure that his wife does not wander too far away with the phone in her hand. “The image freezes here too and you have to move around. But if we stay at home, we have no connection until after midnight.”

The old man looks around. There are already very few lights and the city begins to turn into one huge shadow. “Everything gets pitch black, and everywhere there’s a hole or a ditch full of rotten water,” he murmurs before getting up from the bench. Then he slowly puts away the phone, like someone protecting something too expensive and too fragile in a country where communicating with family has ended up looking more and more like a night-time expedition.

Translated by GH

______________________

Plurality Will Be Part of a Democratic Cuba, But ‘The Priority Is To End the Dictatorship’

José Daniel Ferrer, in Madrid, lashes out at European complicity with Havana

“Being their enemy is always better; it is the only way to get them to respect you,” Ferrer said, referring to Spain’s timid and complacent stance towards the regime. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, 17 May 2026 / “Spain must stop giving oxygen to the Cuban dictatorship.” The dry, direct sentence summed up the message José Daniel Ferrer delivered this Friday at a meeting lasting more than two hours with dozens of Cuban exiles in Madrid. The opposition leader did not come to ask for symbolic gestures or lukewarm declarations, but for a concrete political decision: to suspend the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and Cuba, a framework which, he denounced, has done more to sustain the regime than to improve the lives of Cubans.

In Cuban prisons, Ferrer saw padlocks and handcuffs bearing the inscription “Made in Spain”. The image served to point directly at Spain as the European country most determined to keep relations with Havana open. “After China, Spain has become one of the biggest exporters to Cuba of products used in repression,” he said before an audience that included, among others, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, former Vox spokesman in the Congress of Deputies, and Rocío Monasterio, a Spanish-Cuban politician and former spokeswoman for that party in the Parliament of the Autonomous Community of Madrid.

The opposition figure, released from prison and sent into exile after spending more than twelve years in the regime’s jails, insisted that the Spanish Government cannot present itself as a defender of human rights while backing a policy of understanding with a dictatorship. “Spain must stop supporting an anti-democratic regime that violates the rights of all its citizens,” he maintained.

“It is a regime that only understands the language of pressure” / 14ymedio

During his stay in this country, Ferrer is scheduled to meet politicians from the People’s Party and Vox. For now, he has no meetings arranged with figures from the Socialist Government, although he said he would be willing to speak with them. His aim, he said, would be to repeat to them the same thing he has taken to other European countries: that Cuba does not need more diplomatic oxygen, but international pressure. “It is a regime that only understands the language of pressure,” he said.

Ferrer also recalled the attitude which, according to him, some Spanish officials posted in Havana maintained for years. In the days of the thaw, they avoided meeting opposition figures, even when Barack Obama continue reading

was able to do so during his visit to the Island. The explanation, he said, was that the President of the United States was allowed to do so because he was “the enemy”, whereas Spain was not. Ferrer would answer them with sharp Cuban humour: “Then being their enemy is always better; it is the only way to get them to respect you.”

“If he vomits it up, they pick it up off the floor and put it back in his mouth”

The most harrowing part of the meeting came when he spoke about prison. The leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) described humiliations, punishments and torture suffered by him and by other political prisoners. During a hunger strike, he recalled, they forced him to swallow rotten soup. A guard threatened him: “If he vomits it up, they pick it up off the floor and put it back in his mouth.”

Among the punishments, he mentioned the one the guards themselves know as “Shakira”: handcuffing the detainee by hands and feet for hours, forcing him to writhe in pain on the cold floor of a cell. Another method, he explained, consists of hanging the prisoner from the upper part of a grille, handcuffed, forcing him to remain for a long time barely supported on the tips of his toes.

Ferrer also spoke about the Catholic Church, an institution with which he has a relationship marked by gratitude and disappointment. He recalled moments when the church hierarchy acted as mediator to get inconvenient opposition figures out of Cuba, turning release from prison into banishment. But he distinguished that conduct from that of many priests, religious and laypeople who, inside the Island, he said, “have bravely defended the dignity of Cubans”, even from the pulpit, in the face of abuses by those in power.

“The advice of the regime’s thugs is not advice, it is threats,” he said, before recalling Samaniego’s fable ‘The Dog and the Crocodile’

The opposition leader devoted a central part of his remarks to political prisoners. He asked the exile community not to limit itself to providing economic support to families, but to accompany them emotionally and keep every case constantly visible. “The better known a prisoner of conscience is, the more careful they are about abusing him,” he said. For Ferrer, the most effective combination is for the prisoner to remain firm and for his family also to denounce what is happening.

He also warned against the silence imposed by fear. Many families, he explained, avoid denouncing beatings, threats or lack of medical care in the hope of protecting the inmate. But that strategy, he insisted, almost never works. “The advice of the regime’s thugs is not advice, it is threats,” he said, before recalling Samaniego’s fable ‘The Dog and the Crocodile’: one should not accept as guidance the voice of someone who wants to devour you.

Ferrer also devoted several minutes to the responsibility of the exile community. Leaving Cuba, he said, does not mean abandoning the struggle or becoming a spectator. To prove it, he showed on his phone a WhatsApp thread with an endless list of contacts with activists, relatives of political prisoners, independent journalists and opposition figures who are still inside the Island. “We have to talk every day with those who are over there,” he insisted.

When an activist knows that someone calls him, listens to him and publicises his case, he feels less alone in the face of the machinery of repression. Isolation, he recalled, is one of the regime’s most effective weapons.

“We have to talk every day with those who are over there”

He also referred to the emergence of new political parties and platforms in exile. He considered this positive, but issued a warning: the struggle against the dictatorship cannot be turned into an early election campaign. “The priority must be to end the dictatorship,” he said. Plurality will be indispensable in a democratic Cuba, but first, he stressed, “we have to win the freedoms that do not exist today”.

Ferrer called for coordination among organisations, activists, journalists, Churches, relatives of prisoners and emigrant communities. “The dictatorship is cohesive,” he recalled. Its apparatus, he said, acts together to repress, monitor, discredit, infiltrate and divide.

For that reason, he called on the exile community not to fall into rivalries manufactured in Havana. “Their main strategy has always been to set us against one another,” he warned. Differences of opinion, he added, must not become enmity or a public spectacle for the benefit of the regime.

His final appeal was less a speech than a warning. Cuba’s freedom, he came to say, will not come from international compassion or from agreements with the repressors. It will come when the tap of external legitimacy is turned off, when political prisoners are not left alone, and when the exile community understands that its strength lies not in competing for the future, but in pushing together against the present.

Translated by GH

______________________

The Ladies in White Lament that Sissi Abascal Had to Leave Cuba to Regain her Freedom

“It’s not the way one would want to be free, but the prisoner and their family are the ones who decide,” says Berta Soler

“Sissi and her mother Annia were two women worthy of respect,” Soler emphasized. / Facebook / Sissi Abascal

14ymedio / EFE, Havana, May 16, 2026 – The leader of the Cuban opposition group Ladies in White, Berta Soler, lamented this Friday that political prisoner Sissi Abascal, 28, one of the youngest members of her group, had to leave the country in order to regain her freedom.

“Two brave Ladies in White, Sissi Abascal Zamora and her mother, Annia Zamora, arrived in exile; the choice was to leave Cuba or remain imprisoned,” Soler wrote on social media following the arrival of both dissidents in the U.S. city of Miami.

Soler considered that “it’s not the way one would want to be free, but the prisoner and their family are the ones who decide.”

“With their example, courage, and love for their homeland, they became leaders in this place”

She also highlighted that “Sissi and her mother Annia were two women worthy of respect” in the town of Carlos Rojas in the province of Matanzas, and affirmed that “with their example, courage, and love for their homeland, they became leaders in this place.”

Soler recalled that Abascal is one of the youngest women in the Ladies in White movement, which she joined “at only 16 years old.” continue reading

The independent group Justice 11J, which has been responsible for documenting arrests, judicial proceedings, and human rights violations on the Island, celebrated on social media that “Sissi is out of prison.”

But it also demanded that “all people imprisoned for political reasons be released, without exile being imposed on them as a condition.”

Prisoners Defenders, based in Madrid, recorded 1,260 political prisoners in Cuba

Likewise, the NGO Cubalex emphasized that Sissi Abascal “is being forced to leave Cuba, with her freedom conditioned on exile” and that “she is leaving the country alongside her mother Annia Zamora.”

The organization added that in 2025 Cuban authorities denied Abascal the benefit of being transferred to a minimum-security regime, as well as parole.

“Today, they prefer to grant her the benefit of parole — at the discretion of the authorities — in order to exile her, rather than place her in a less severe regime within Cuba,” Cubalex stated.

Abascal was sentenced to six years in prison for the crimes of “public disorder,” “contempt,” and “assault” for her participation in the anti-government protests of July 11, 2021, the largest in decades in Cuba.

Abascal’s release coincided with the publication of the latest report by the Madrid-based NGO Prisoners Defenders, which recorded 1,260 political prisoners in Cuba.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

Trump Wants To ‘Turn Things Around’ in Cuba, Despite the Regime’s ‘Red Lines’

In an interview with ‘The Hill’, Havana’s ambassador to Washington insists that the “political system and internal order” are not on the negotiating table.

US President Donald Trump in an archive photograph. / EFE/Samuel Corum

EFE/14ymedio, International Desk, May 16, 2026 / US President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration is confident that the Cuban government will eventually side with Washington at a time when it has intensified its US pressure campaign on the island.

When asked by journalist Bret Baier in an interview with Fox News whether Cuba would side with the US and not with China, Trump replied: “I think we’re going to turn it around.”

The president praised the role of Secretary of State Marco Rubio when asked about his administration’s actions regarding Cuba.

In addition, Trump expressed confidence in limiting the influence of his global rivals over Havana when questioned about his stance on the visit of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Ratcliffe, which took place this Thursday .

According to a CIA statement, Ratcliffe traveled to the Cuban capital to hold direct talks with officials from the Ministry of the Interior and those responsible for the island’s intelligence services.

During the meeting, issues related to intelligence cooperation, regional security, and Cuba’s economic situation were discussed, against a backdrop of persistent tensions between Washington and Havana. The visit included meetings with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro—grandson of former president Raúl Castro and a security advisor—as well as with Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas. continue reading

In addition, reports this week have surfaced that the US justice system may file a criminal case against former President Raúl Castro for the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996.

Cuban Ambassador to the United States, Lianys Torres Rivera. / Ministry of Foreign Affairs

You are not going to put your political system or your internal order on the table, as the people of our country decide in a sovereign manner.

This Friday, Lianys Torres Rivera, Cuba’s ambassador to the US, stated in an interview with The Hill that Havana is maintaining its “red lines” amid stalled negotiations that, she said, “have not progressed,” and in the face of President Trump’s looming threat to invade the nation.

Torres Rivera stated that the country maintains a policy of “discretion” regarding the ongoing negotiations and declined to comment on the topics being discussed. However, she reiterated that Cuba’s independence is not subject to negotiation.

“A serious country that respects itself,” Torres Rivera said, “would not negotiate its sovereignty with another country. You’re not going to put your political system or your internal order on the table, which the people of our country decide in a sovereign manner,” she affirmed. “Those are the red lines.”

Although Torres Rivera acknowledged that the protests over the blackouts are understandable, she warned against a “misinterpretation” of them as a sign of a weakening of Cuban resolve.

“When they endure 20 hours of blackout, they have reasons to complain and they express it,” she said, but added that the US should not interpret that as meaning that “the Cuban people will not defend themselves against US aggression, will not defend our homeland against an invasion.”

We see no need for war or any US military action against Cuba, simply because we are not a threat to the US in any way.

The diplomat asserted that the Cuban government is preparing for a possible military escalation, but insisted that these measures are “defensive” and not offensive. “We don’t want Cubans dying in Cuba,” she declared, and recalled Bruno Rodríguez’s words, reiterating that an intervention could turn into “a bloodbath” on the island.

“We see no need for a war or any US military action against Cuba, simply because we are not a threat to the US in any way,” she stated.

When questioned about the $ 100 million in aid announced by Washington, which would be distributed through non-governmental organizations and the Catholic Church, Torres Rivera stated that the Cuban government is still unaware of the specific details of the proposal, although she asserted that Cuba has never rejected foreign aid “when it is done in good faith and does not constitute political manipulation.”

______________________

Havana After the War

Díaz-Canel is not afraid of ending up like Maduro, but he is terrified of ending up like Ceausescu

The Island reached the postwar period before going through the war. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Madrid, Yunior García Aguilera, May 16, 2026 – Havana looks like a bombed-out city, even though no enemy has yet signed the order to attack. Buildings split open like broken ribs. Balconies hang over the sidewalk with the stubbornness of the hanged. The city—one of the most beautiful in the region—now looks like a mouth full of cavities. Almost all the photos arriving from the capital seem taken by a war correspondent.

Smoke rises from several corners. Garbage accumulated for days burns in the streets. Plastic burns, rotten food burns, and patience burns. The air seems to come from a diseased factory. People cross those toxic clouds dodging sewage water, loose wires, holes, and rubble. Havana breathes with lungs full of ash.

But the bombs still have not fallen. The Island reached the postwar period before going through the war. The entire country has been devastated by a regime more persistent than white phosphorus.

In that landscape, the external threat appears almost like a gift for those in power. The Trump Administration mixes sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and increasingly harsh warnings. But everything indicates, for now, that Washington prefers to force a negotiation rather than open fire. The regime’s strategists seem to have understood this. That is why they play for time, raise the tone, overact resistance, and transfer—as always—the full weight of the crisis onto the shoulders of the people.

When there is no prosperity left to promise nor future left to administer, there is always the besieged square. / 14ymedio

Díaz-Canel is not afraid of ending up like Maduro. The former Venezuelan dictator, at least until today, remains alive, protected, and turned into a judicial piece rather than a corpse. The gray-haired diva from Placetas fears another kind of ending. He fears ending up like Ochoa, like the de la Guardia brothers, or like Alejandro Gil: devoured by the same machinery he helped sustain. But what truly should keep him awake at night is ending up like Ceausescu, suddenly facing a crowd that no longer obeys or applauds.

That is why the external threat seems less nightmarish to him. It allows him to play the victim, gather international solidarity, and demand absolute loyalty within the borders. The external enemy is the narrative oxygen of every exhausted dictatorship. When there is no prosperity left to promise nor future left to administer, there is always continue reading

the besieged square.

In political science there is a social phenomenon called rally round the flag: the closing of ranks around the flag. John Mueller studied it in 1970 while analyzing spikes in presidential popularity during international crises. William Baker and John Oneal later expanded the debate about its causes. When a community feels attacked from outside, even those who detest the government may lower the volume of their reproaches so as not to appear allied with the aggressor.

Iran offers a recent example. The Islamic Republic has repressed protests, imprisoned dissidents, and governed through terror. However, in the face of attacks or external threats, critical sectors may close ranks in the name of national sovereignty. The external threat does not erase internal discontent, but it can discipline it for a time. It does not convince everyone; it is enough if it paralyzes a few.

A real external threat would allow him to disguise mediocrity as martyrdom

Cuba is not Iran, but the mechanism is similar. Many critical voices inside and outside the Island perfectly recognize Castroism’s responsibility for the national ruin. But faced with the possibility of foreign intervention, some weigh every word, postpone demands, and moderate their tone. They fear appearing, through manipulation or clumsiness, in the invader’s photo. The regime knows that hesitation. It exploits it without scruples. It needs Washington to shout so it can demand silence in Havana.

For Díaz-Canel, a war against the United States could also function as retrospective absolution. His administration has been disastrous. His authority is borrowed. His popularity has never even approached discreetly decent figures. A real external threat would allow him to disguise mediocrity as martyrdom.

And part of the international press would seize the opportunity to tell the worn-out story of the besieged small country, the uncompromising leader, the modern Numancia. That is all the stage scenery Castroism needs to hide hunger, garbage, blackouts, prisons, and fear.

Raúl Castro’s grandson has been closer to the CIA than the most radical of the Cuban opposition

But reality insists on ruining their script. In Cuba, despite the blackmail of the besieged flag, protests are indeed taking place. They are not always massive nor organized. Sometimes they are merely a street standing its ground, a neighborhood shouting, pots and pans banging in the middle of blackouts, a garbage dump in flames, or a mother who cannot take it anymore. But they exist. And that is precisely what terrifies the regime.

Those in power would like to convince the world that every internal protest is an enemy operation. They would like every outraged Cuban to have to choose between patriotic hunger and the foreign missile. They would like to reduce the country to two miserable options: obey the Party or serve as a pretext for Washington. But after decades of accusing us of being “CIA agents,” now it turns out they are the ones sitting comfortably chatting with the ogre from the story. Raúl Castro’s grandson has been closer to the CIA than the most radical of the Cuban opposition.

The scenario the regime fears most is the insubordination of the hungry. Not the aircraft carrier facing the Malecón, but the entire neighborhood facing Party headquarters. Not the attack order signed in Washington, but the intimate, collective, and irreversible decision to lose fear in Cuba. If the social explosion repeats itself, Díaz-Canel will discover that his true ending was not written in English, but in Cuban.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

Drastic Reduction of Transportation in Cuba and Priority Given to the Use of Electric Tricycles

Rodríguez Dávila announces “adjustments in public services” while his ministry wastes fuel in its enormous Havana building, where generators run day and night.
Starting in June, the frequency of trains to eastern Cuba will be reduced to one trip every two weeks; bus service between Havana and the provinces will be limited to three weekly departures.

While the leaders continue moving around in long car caravans, they are reducing Cubans’ mobility even further. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, May 16, 2026 – The Cuban Government once again asked for sacrifices from a population that already has almost no way to move around. Faced with an “acute fuel shortage,” the Ministry of Transportation announced a drastic reduction in national, railway, and maritime services, while placing electric tricycles, eco-cars, and other alternative means as part of the official response to a crisis that is increasingly paralyzing daily life on the Island.

Minister Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila reported this Friday on new “adjustments in public passenger services” and on the priority that will be given to the transportation of fuel, food, medicines, raw materials, and products intended for export. He also assured that Public Health and Education would receive differentiated treatment, although the package of measures confirms that traveling within Cuba will, from now on, become even more difficult.

The announcement contrasts with the usual image of the Ministry of Transportation itself, housed in an enormous Havana building where, according to residents and passersby in the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood, generators remain running day and night every time the power goes out, for as long as 20 consecutive hours. While Cubans are asked to resign themselves to fewer buses, fewer trains, and fewer maritime trips, the state headquarters maintains fuel consumption that many consider wasteful amid the energy emergency.

Routes to Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Holguín, and Bayamo-Manzanillo will operate with one round trip approximately every two weeks.

National Bus routes will maintain their current schedule only until 11:59 p.m. on June 17, after the minister himself acknowledged in March that only a quarter of provincial buses and one train every eight days were operating. Beginning on the 18th, trips between Havana and provincial capitals will be reduced to three weekly frequencies. Manzanillo and Baracoa will have only one departure per week.

In the case of maritime transportation to the Isle of Youth, the ferry between Nueva Gerona and Batabanó will keep its two weekly trips — Tuesdays and Saturdays — until June 16. Starting on the 20th of that month, the service will be reduced to a continue reading

single weekly frequency, departing Nueva Gerona on Saturdays at 7:00 a.m. and returning from Batabanó at 4:00 p.m.

Rail transportation is also not escaping the cutbacks. National trains will maintain their schedule during the remainder of May and the first half of June, but afterward the routes to Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Holguín, and Bayamo-Manzanillo will operate with one round trip approximately every two weeks. The rest of the interprovincial and local rail services will remain suspended, except for cases such as the railcars of Boquerón and Caimanera, in Guantánamo.

“I know the population wants private drivers to charge 20 pesos and not 500 or 600, but it’s not possible.”

National air links to Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, and Nueva Gerona will remain “as long as operational conditions allow.” Viazul services will also continue, with sales in foreign currency through the Clásica card, an option inaccessible to much of the Cuban population that earns salaries in national currency.

The minister also acknowledged the impact of private transportation prices, whose fares have skyrocketed in recent years amid fuel shortages and a new gasoline sales scheme in dollars that also fails to guarantee supply for private citizens. “I know the population wants private drivers to charge 20 pesos and not 500 or 600, but it’s not possible,” he said, justifying that transport operators must pay for fuel, repairs, and their own compensation.

The crisis will also affect local transportation. Each province will have to decide which urban, suburban, intermunicipal, rural, railbus, and boat routes it considers essential, according to available fuel supplies.

The minister asked to “make the maximum use” of state and private electric tricycles on the routes with the greatest demand. / 14ymedio

The government’s major bet, however, is once again electric mobility. Rodríguez Dávila announced the acceleration of the entry into service of 200 electric cars intended for medical services, currently at port, as well as the incorporation of a final batch of 150 electric tricycles, with priority given to municipalities.

The minister asked to “make the maximum use” of state and private electric tricycles on the routes with the greatest demand, speed up licenses for those providing services with electric vehicles, and put into operation solar charging stations for the country’s 19 electric tricycle and eco-car bases. According to the Government, these bases will operate independently from the national electric system (SEN), in a country where blackouts continue to define daily routine.

The emphasis on electric vehicles is not coming only from the Ministry of Transportation. Parallel to the announcement of the cutbacks, Miguel Díaz-Canel visited the company Vehículos Eléctricos del Caribe, known as Vedca, an international economic partnership between the Cuban state company Minerva and the Chinese company Tianjin Dongxing. There, the president described the factory as a “little jewel” and called for it to be “protected.”

The company, located in Boyeros, assembled more than 10,000 units last year and billed more than 12 million dollars in 2025, according to its executives. Vedca now aims to transform itself into a mixed enterprise, manufacture metal structures for tricycles in Cuba using laser cutting and robotic welding technology, and introduce electric pickup trucks.

Vedca motorcycles cost more than 1,200 dollars and tricycles range between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars, figures unimaginable for those who depend on a salary in pesos. / Cubadebate

But the commercialization model itself shows the limits of that solution for most Cubans. Vedca sells its products through international payment gateways; that is, with money sent from abroad, and through foreign-currency retail chains. In the available offers, motorcycles exceed 1,200 dollars and tricycles range between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars, figures unimaginable for those who depend on a salary in pesos. The company plans to open mixed TRD-Vedca stores in Havana, Villa Clara, Santiago de Cuba, and Holguín.

The company has 96 workers, an average salary of 16,500 pesos, and plans to enter a system of bonuses paid in foreign currency. Its executives also stated that the partner-administrative building already operates with a photovoltaic system and that by August or September they hope to disconnect the entire facility from the SEN. They also announced that the next tricycles will arrive with built-in solar panels.

During the visit, Díaz-Canel presented the factory as an example of cooperation with China and as part of the country’s so-called “energy transition.” The ambassador in Havana, Hua Xin, promised that Beijing would maintain its support for Cuba in that process. The Cuban leader, for his part, said he would return before the end of the year and asked workers to let him know if “anything gets stuck.”

While the leaders continue traveling in long car caravans, they are reducing Cubans’ mobility even further. The electric tricycle may ease some local routes, but it does not replace a national transportation network or solve the growing isolation between provinces.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

The U.S. Takes Steps Toward Charging Raúl Castro Over the Shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue Planes

Cuban José Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, remains “skeptical” about the charges against the former president of the island.

Raúl Castro and his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, “El Cangrejo,” [The Crab] in the former leader’s most recent public appearance on May 1 / Cubadebat

14ymedio, Madrid, May 15, 2026 — The United States is preparing a formal indictment against former president Raúl Castro for the 1996 downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes, according to sources cited by the Miami Herald.

The CBS had already reported on Thursday that the Justice Department was considering filing charges against Fidel Castro’s younger brother in that case, one of the most tense episodes in the relationship between Washington and Havana in recent decades.

According to the Miami Herald, the indictment will be announced during an event at the Freedom Tower in Miami commemorating Cuban Independence Day, following approval by a grand jury. The event will also include a tribute to the four victims of the incident.

Asked about those reports on Friday while returning from China aboard Air Force One, US President Donald Trump declined to comment, saying he did not want to make a statement.

So far, the US government has not officially confirmed the possible indictment.

The case dates back to February 1996, when Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were shot down by Cuban forces in an incident that killed four people and led to a serious diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

Donald Trump declined to comment, saying he did not want to make any remarks.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reacted favorably to the information published by CBS and wrote on the X network: “Go ahead, it was about time.”

The possibility of bringing charges against Raúl Castro arises amid the hardening of Washington’s policy towards Cuba since Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025.

Raúl Castro, 94, formally stepped down as head of the Communist Party of Cuba in 2021, although he is still considered an influential figure within the Cuban political apparatus.

His grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, alias El Cangrejo [the Crab], has been mentioned in recent contacts between representatives of both countries. continue reading

The information about the possible indictment comes a day after the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Ratcliffe , met in Havana with Cuban leaders, including Castro’s grandson, according to reports divulged about the meeting.

According to these versions, Ratcliffe conveyed Washington’s conditions for handling relations with Cuba, amid pressure exerted by the United States on the island, which includes an oil embargo imposed since last January.

For his part, Cuban José Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, remains “skeptical” about achieving justice and change on the Island despite reports about the indictment of Castro.

“I am confident that justice will be achieved, a justice that is long overdue, because, I repeat, they have let so much time pass.”

“I remain skeptical until the point where action is taken, and the action to be taken is the criminal prosecution of Raúl Castro, who gave the orders, and of all those who cooperated with Raúl Castro in the assassination,” Basulto said in an interview with EFE in Miami.

The dissident, one of the leaders of the exile community in the US, pointed out that “justice delayed is justice denied” in response to reports that the Administration of Donald Trump is preparing a formal indictment against Castro, then Minister of the Armed Forces of Cuba, for shooting down Brothers to the Rescue planes on February 24, 1996.

Basulto, who founded the organization to help rafters fleeing the island, survived the attack, but has since sought justice for the deaths of American pilots Mario de la Peña, Carlos Costa, and Armando Alejandre Jr., and legal resident Pablo Morales, all of Cuban origin.

“I trust that justice will be achieved, a long-awaited justice, because, I repeat, they have let so much time pass: delegated justice, denied justice. And what can I say? I believe this should have happened a long time ago,” the founder of Brothers to the Rescue insisted.

The Cuban leader responds that “everything is possible” amid the expectation that Castro will face the same fate as the deposed Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro, captured by the United States on January 3 in Caracas following a formal accusation by the Department of Justice.

“Anything is possible, but you’d have to ask the administration of Mr. Trump, who is the one who makes these decisions. I hope the United States decides to take action against this vile act against the pilots,” Basulto replied from his home.

“Anything is possible, but you’d have to ask the administration of Mr. Trump, who is the one who makes these decisions.”

The 85-year-old activist doubts the productivity of the negotiations between Washington and Havana, which include Raúl Castro’s grandson, opining that change would only occur with a “unilateral action” by the United States against the Cuban government.

Meanwhile, the indictment against Raúl Castro must be approved by a grand jury, CBS notes, framing the information in any case within a context of maximum pressure from the US, with an oil blockade that has Cuba on the verge of energy collapse, surviving thanks to the import permit for private entities issued by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department.

Because of the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier opened a statewide criminal investigation last March against Raúl Castro, now 94 and then Minister of the Armed Forces of Cuba, who was identified as responsible for ordering the attack.

That day, two twin-engine Cessnas flying over the Florida Straits were shot down by Cuban Air Force MiG-29 fighter jets. Three Americans and one Florida resident, all of Cuban origin, died: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales. The tragedy triggered a diplomatic crisis between Washington and Havana and led, weeks later, to the tightening of the embargo with the passage of the Helms-Burton Act.

Brothers to the Rescue was a non-profit organization founded in Miami in the early 1990s. Its members patrolled international waters in search of Cuban rafters attempting to flee the island. Havana accused them of violating its airspace and carrying out political provocations. Washington always maintained that the downed flights were in international airspace, and this was confirmed by reports from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous body of the Organization of American States.

The reopening of the case, however, faces legal and practical obstacles.

Subsequent investigations revealed that at least two Cuban agents infiltrated into Brothers to the Rescue provided detailed information about flight routes and schedules to the Cuban government, facilitating the military operation. In 2003, a U.S. federal court indicted a Cuban general and two fighter pilots for the downing. However, no formal charges were ever filed against the Castro brothers.

The 1996 downing marked a turning point in bilateral relations and solidified the perception that the Cuban government was prepared to use lethal force against civilians in the context of the migration conflict.

he reopening of the case, however, faces legal and practical obstacles. Raúl Castro does not reside in the United States, and although an old bilateral extradition treaty exists, it has not been enforced since 1959.

In a social media post Thursday night, responding to the information revealed by CBS, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wrote: “Let ‘er rip, it’s been a long time coming!”

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________

A Transition for Cuba Cannot Be Based on Secular Saints

Reflections on Rolando Gallardo’s proposal for the republican refoundation of Cuba

There is exhaustion, disillusionment, anger, and a desire for escape, but the desire for change does not automatically equal the capacity for insurrection. / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Málaga, José A. Adrián Torres, May 15, 2026 — I read with great interest Rolando Gallardo’s article on the need for a republican refoundation in Cuba. I agree with much of the diagnosis: speaking of a conventional transition may be insufficient for a country where the regime has degraded not only institutions, but also social trust, personal initiative, public responsibility, and collective hope. Cuba is not facing merely the problem of replacing one government with another; it is facing the much more arduous challenge of rebuilding a political community after decades of fear, dependence, simulation, and moral impoverishment.

Precisely for that reason, the author’s proposal seems lucid in its starting point but overly confident in its development. The idea of a civil council made up of jurists, intellectuals, and figures of proven integrity may be desirable as a goal, but it risks resting on an excessively idealistic premise: that a group of morally qualified individuals, without immediate political ambitions and motivated by patriotism, will be capable of managing a transition of enormous complexity without becoming trapped by interests, factions, external pressures, or internal power struggles.

That assumption recalls, despite all differences, another form of anthropological faith: the belief that a political process can produce new men, selfless, virtuous, and devoted to the common good. Castroism turned that fantasy into revolutionary dogma, and reality ultimately showed something far older and less epic: human beings do not cease to have interests, vanities, fears, loyalties, and appetites simply because they are assigned a historic mission.

The Cuban transition will certainly need valuable people. But it cannot rest on the presumed moral purity of its protagonists

The Cuban transition will certainly need valuable people. But it cannot rest on the presumed moral purity of its protagonists, but rather on rules, limits, oversight, counterweights, and verifiable procedures. The problem is not finding heroes; the problem is building institutions that function even when the heroes grow tired, make mistakes, or begin behaving like continue reading

any ordinary person with a bit of power in their hands.

It is also important not to underestimate the degree of discouragement in Cuban society today. The Cuban people are not incapable, nor do they lack dignity, nor have they completely lost their instinct for freedom. But they are exhausted, impoverished, monitored, fragmented, and for too long accustomed to surviving rather than organizing. To think that a massive, spontaneous, and sustained internal mobilization alone will be enough to bring about change may be as naïve as thinking that a transitional administration led by an enlightened elite will solve the problem from above.

Here emerges a decisive issue that the article does not sufficiently develop: the relationship between internal repression, popular mobilization, and the legitimacy of any external assistance. In other communist regimes with strong police control, such as East Germany or Ceaușescu’s Romania, the fall of the system was preceded by visible, extensive, and difficult-to-hide popular pressure. It was not merely a problem of economic exhaustion or ideological decay: there came a moment when fear stopped functioning as the regime’s cement. The streets, with all their risks, produced an unequivocal image: society had publicly broken the pact of obedience.

The regime no longer convinces, but it still manages fear, fatigue, and social fragmentation. That is no small thing.

In Cuba, by contrast, that rupture has yet to consolidate. There have been significant outbreaks, and the Island-wide protests of 11 July 2021 showed that there was a real reserve of protest and exhaustion. But it also demonstrated the repressive effectiveness of the state apparatus and the extremely high personal cost of challenging it. Since then, protest has appeared fragmented, intermittent, and often absorbed by the daily struggle to survive: obtaining food, electricity, medicine, transportation, or simply escaping. The regime no longer persuades, but it still administers fear, fatigue, and social fragmentation. That is no small thing. The Cuban dictatorship may no longer possess epic appeal, but it still retains police, archives, prisons, informants, and considerable experience in crushing wills.

This absence of massive and sustained internal mobilization greatly complicates any hypothesis of decisive external assistance. A U.S. intervention—military, coercive, humanitarian, or presented as a stabilization operation—would require some kind of internal political legitimization: a widespread uprising, a visible fracture within the Armed Forces, an explicit request from recognizable transitional authorities, or a humanitarian crisis impossible to contain. Without such a trigger, assistance would risk appearing not as aid to an uprising nation, but as an external imposition. And there the regime, even moribund, would find its final propaganda fuel: presenting itself as the defender of national sovereignty against the old imperial enemy.

This point is especially delicate when considering current U.S. policy toward Cuba. Certain sectors, with figures such as Marco Rubio and Donald Trump himself, seem positioned within a logic of maximum pressure and strategic waiting: tightening the siege, hardening the rhetoric, and awaiting an internal situation that would make a more direct intervention politically viable. But that expectation requires a fuse inside the Island. Without a clear sign of popular rebellion, without an organized internal demand, and without a fracture within the power apparatus, any external action would be morally and politically exposed. It would not be enough to claim that Cuba is being helped; it would have to be demonstrable that assistance is being provided to a Cuba that has risen up.

Any intervention raises questions that cannot be solved with anti-Castro enthusiasm: who governs the next day? With what legitimacy? Under what international mandate?

From there arises the most uncomfortable question: the role of the United States and the Cuban diaspora. It is reasonable to admit that any real transition in Cuba will require external backing, economic assistance, security guarantees, technical support, and intense participation from the exile community. To deny this would be to repeat the old nationalist reflex that the regime itself has used for decades to shield itself. But something very different is turning that support into opaque political tutelage or, worse, into a military intervention born from a provoked or instrumentalized crisis.

An intervention by force might appear, in the abstract, to be the quickest solution. But every intervention opens questions that cannot be resolved through anti-Castro enthusiasm: who governs the next day? With what legitimacy? Under what international mandate? For how long? What is done with the Armed Forces? How are looting, revenge, mass flight, or the emergence of new mafia powers prevented? How can wounded nationalism be prevented from turning former oppressors into supposed defenders of sovereignty?

Cuba is not Iraq or Libya, certainly. It has a history, a diaspora, a cultural and family proximity to the United States, and a unique relationship with Miami that make the scenario different. Nor does there seem to exist in Cuba a deep and majority identification with the regime comparable to what other authoritarian systems managed to preserve for longer. There is exhaustion, disillusionment, anger, and a desire to leave. But the desire for change does not automatically equal the capacity for insurrection. Between wanting something to fall and assuming the risk of pushing it lies an enormous distance, especially when the person pushing knows they may end up in prison, in exile, or with their family ruined.

It will not be enough to expel Castroism from power; it will be necessary to prevent it from surviving in practices, fears, corruption, dependence, and the culture of simulation.

For that reason, the solution cannot be conceived solely as the overthrow of the regime. It must be conceived as the reconstruction of legitimate authority. And legitimacy is not imported wrapped in humanitarian aid, nor does it disembark intact at a port under military protection. It is built, negotiated, recognized, and subjected to limits. The exile community can contribute resources, vision, international pressure, and economic experience; the United States can offer guarantees, assistance, and deterrent capacity; but the ultimate legitimacy of Cuba’s refoundation will have to arise, in some way, from Cubans on the Island themselves. Without that anchor, the transition risks appearing as a replacement of tutelage: from Castroist tutelage to external tutelage, even if the latter comes wrapped in flags of freedom.

Therefore, rather than an administration of notables or a military takeover, Cuba would need a transition architecture with international backing, decisive participation by Cubans both inside and outside the Island, security guarantees, institutional purging, transitional justice, orderly economic opening, and a realistic political timetable. It will not be enough to expel Castroism from power; it will be necessary to prevent it from surviving in practices, fears, corruption, dependence, and the culture of simulation.

The Cuban problem, therefore, does not consist solely in designing a transition architecture for the day after. The prior problem is how to reach that day. The author seems to trust that the collapse of the regime will naturally open a space for a supervised civil administration. But that collapse may not occur in a clean or heroic way. It may take the form of prolonged degradation, dispersed social protests, mass migration, energy collapse, internal fractures within the apparatus itself, or a chaotic combination of all these things. In that scenario, the question is not only who will rebuild Cuba, but what type of event will grant legitimacy to the beginning of that reconstruction.

The great difficulty will not only be toppling an exhausted structure. The great difficulty will also be preventing the vacuum from being occupied by the same reflexes that made it possible: caudillismo, clientelism, external dependence, redemptive epic narratives, and contempt for institutions. In this, the article is entirely correct: Cuba needs architecture, not romanticism. But that architecture will have to be designed for real human beings, not administrative heroes or republican saints. And it will have to begin from an uncomfortable truth: without a sufficiently strong, visible, and sustained internal signal, any external assistance risks becoming, in the eyes of many, an intervention. And any intervention without internal legitimacy may end up giving Castroism its final disguise: that of the patriotic victim of foreign aggression.

Translated by Regina Anavy

______________________