Fifteen Line Crews from Other Provinces Arrive in Havana as the Grid Is Reconnected

The National Electric System was restored at 7:00 a.m., an hour after Felton 1 came online, as residents predict the next collapse is close at hand

A man with his cell phone connected to the charging port of a rechargeable fan this Wednesday in Havana. / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, July 15, 2026 / The National Electric System (SEN) has been connected since 7:00 a.m. this Wednesday, just over an hour after Unit 1 of the Felton thermoelectric plant in Holguín came online. The recovery from this collapse – which occurred around 11:00 a.m. Tuesday and was the third in eight days and the fifth so far this year – was the fastest of the recent incidents, despite the fuel shortage weighing down the restart.

To reconnect the SEN, past experience shows, generation must begin with easy-start sources – solar, hydroelectric and generator engines – to supply small areas known as microsystems, which are then progressively interconnected.

By early this morning, Havana had recovered all 24 substations in the capital, 100%, though this does not mean customers have service. The provincial power company reported that 68 circuits had service, benefiting 205,125 customers with a total of 211 megawatts, or 24% of residents.

Havana’s 43 hospitals and four water supply systems with five pumping stations are in better shape.

Havana’s 43 hospitals in Havana and four water supply systems with five pumps are in a better situation.

Customers have not stopped complaining, even after learning that the system was reconnected. Most remained without power, either because their circuit still had no service or because it was their turn for the scheduled outage. “All we can do is pray and have a lot of faith that it doesn’t go down again,” one user wrote. “You’ll see, the day after tomorrow. Keep praying,” another replied.

Although most expressed admiration for the enormous effort being made by electrical workers across the country, frustration with the way things are being managed runs deep. “How many minutes will it last this continue reading

time? And there are places that still haven’t found out, because the only light they’ve seen is the sun’s,” one customer lamented.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines confirmed that all Energás units were operating, while Units 3 and 4 of the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes thermoelectric plant and Felton 1 were in the process of starting up around midnight.

Minister Vicente de la O Levy, in his appearance on Tuesday, attributed the new incident to oscillations in the national grid that caused a generating unit to drop out, triggering a domino effect that disconnected several more plants until the system collapsed entirely.

The official also said the collapse of the SEN caused a new leak in the boiler of the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the country’s main generating unit, and that the number of days needed to repair it would be reported in due course.

He further revealed that breakdowns are increasing in Havana because of the overload on circuits and transformers caused by the system’s instability.

According to his account, an estimated 13,000 of the capital’s 33,000 transformers are operating under overload, which is why 15 line crews from other provinces will arrive in the capital this Wednesday to help divide circuits, expand capacity and replace equipment.

Orders have also been given to double local production at the transformer factory to guarantee the supply of components.

At the end of June, Edier Guzmán Pacheco, the state utility’s director of thermal generation, presented the schedule for bringing several thermoelectric units online in July “to face the summer with better generation levels.”

The first to come online was to be Unit 5 at Mariel, on July 1, followed by Unit 6 of 10 de Octubre, in Nuevitas, on July 8 or 9; Unit 6 at Mariel, on the 15th; Unit 3 in Havana, on the 20th; and Unit 5 at Renté, on the 26th.

If the plan were met, 400 MW would have been recovered this month, but the official warned: “This should not be added in strictly arithmetic fashion to the capacity currently available, since the National Electric System remains in constant operation and there is a risk that new breakdowns will occur in other units.”

Now at the midpoint of July, the result is three total system collapses, along with the unsettling sense that it will keep happening – even as it matters less and less to people. “At this rate,” one UNE customer joked on social media, “they’ll start publishing a schedule for the SEN’s collapses.”

Translated by GH.

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Cuba Signs Alliance in Mexico to Extend Mayan World Tourism to the Island

The first multi-destination package will launch in August, integrating flights between Cancún and Havana

Cuba will link the Mayan World with Varadero beach./ ‘Cubadebate’

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 13 July 2026/ Tourism agencies from Mexico and Havana signed a cooperation agreement that includes extending the Mayan World tourism program to the island. The initiative will combine historical, beach, and nature destinations with the goal of attracting more Mexican visitors and diversifying Cuba’s tourism offerings, at a time when the sector is going through its worst period since the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’re going to link the Mayan World – which in Mexico includes Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Yucatán, as well as Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador – with our beach at Varadero, but we’re also going to do it with the capital, with Havana, and bring in nature-based products. In other words, we’re going to keep expanding this experience with all the riches Cuba has to offer as a tourist destination,” said the tourism counselor at the island’s embassy in Mexico, Aleinor Zerquera, in comments to Prensa Latina.

To this end, the Taíno Tours agency, the trade name under which Havanatur operates in Mexico, reached an agreement with the local tour operators Turismo Popular and Prelasa Tours to “boost multi-destination tourism” between the two countries.

On this point, the director of the Cuban agency, Erick Gómez, said that “alliances like this one create good opportunities for all three companies.” continue reading

It will draw on the appeal of the Varadero Festival as a cultural hook to complement the Mayan World experience

The first multi-destination package will launch in August, integrating flights between Cancún and Havana, and will draw on the appeal of the Varadero Festival as a cultural hook to complement the Mayan World experience.

According to Mexico’s Ministry of Economy, the Mayan World region is visited by around 20 million international tourists a year, 70% of whom visit destinations within Mexico. It is also the country’s leading tourism hub, receiving 45% of domestic tourism and 55% of foreign tourism. Its offerings include sun-and-beach destinations, culture and history, cruises, ecotourism and adventure travel, and, more recently, medical tourism in Yucatán.

For the island, by contrast, this move comes at a particularly difficult time for the tourism industry. May’s figures reveal the extent of the collapse the sector has dragged through in recent months. In the fifth month of the year, only 30,883 visitors arrived on the island, a very marginal increase compared with April, which saw 332 more tourists. So far this year, Cuba has received 359,491 international travelers, 58.4% fewer than during the same period in 2025. However, breaking down the numbers, the vast majority arrived in January — 184,833 — a dismal figure for a month that traditionally used to bring in as many as half a million tourists. With the announcement of the end of refueling for international flights, most airlines began evacuating their nationals and ended up canceling routes that had become unsustainable, so the following months saw only minimal numbers of travelers arrive.

Most airlines began evacuating their nationals and ended up canceling routes that had become unsustainable

The energy blockade, which has paralyzed most flights, combined with the sanctions on Gaesa, has ended up dealing the final blow to one of the few sources of hard currency not only for the state but for hundreds of thousands of people who make their living from the sector through private businesses, from restaurants to craft shops and retail, or simple street vending.

According to a report by the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei) covering the first quarter of the year, only 1.3 out of every 10 hotel rooms in Cuba were filled at the start of the year, visitor numbers fell 48% — 298,057 compared with 573,363 the previous year — overnight stays also dropped by half — 1.8 million compared with 3.6 million — and gross revenue fell from close to 35 billion pesos (52 million dollars, at the informal exchange rate of 670 to 1) to around 20 billion. And all of this even though January was still considered a “normal” month.

The losses are not confined to hotels. The Onei report, which quarterly adds up revenue from other sectors, shows steep declines across the board. The overall figure fell from 48.4 billion to 27.9 billion pesos, but broken down, the hardest-hit sector is food service, which lost nearly half – dropping from 19 billion to just 10 billion. Next comes lodging, which fell from 14 billion to 8 billion, transportation – from 5.7 billion to 3.9 billion – and retail trade – from 2.1 billion to 1.5 billion.

Translated by GH.

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Cuba: Voices Come to Light From Before the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue Shootdown

CNN obtained the audio recorded inside the only aircraft that managed to escape the attack in 1996.

“It gives you goosebumps to hear it,” Martín told CNN. / Screenshot / CNN

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, July 3, 2026 – Cubans had already heard the celebration of the military pilots who, on February 24, 1996, had just destroyed an unarmed civilian aircraft carrying defenseless people. “We blew their balls off!” one of them shouted after firing his missiles at a Brothers to the Rescue Cessna, as if he had shot down an enemy bomber and not a small aircraft over international waters.

Now, a recording released by CNN en Español allows the crime to be heard from the other side. Not from the cockpit of the MiG fighter jets, but from the aircraft flown by José Basulto, the only one of the three Brothers to the Rescue planes that managed to return to Florida. The tape, preserved for three decades in a collection of videos and cassettes belonging to former pilot Reinaldo Martín, recorded the communications and the fear inside the aircraft while the other two were being destroyed.

“This is gold,” Martín says as he shows CNN the cassette recorded aboard Basulto’s aircraft, whose call sign was Seagull 1. The recording also captures Carlos Costa, identified as Seagull Charlie, and Mario Manuel de la Peña, Seagull Mike. “It gives you goosebumps to hear it,” Martín admits while listening to one of the voices.

“They are going to shoot us down,” the pilot is heard warning. Then comes the silence

Communications between the MiG fighter jets and the Cuban command post were intercepted by U.S. intelligence services. Three days after the attack, on February 27, 1996, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright made a transcript public and presented it as proof that the Cuban military knew they were attacking civilian aircraft and celebrated their destruction. “This isn’t guts, it’s cowardice,” Albright declared before the Security Council.

A decade later, Cuban journalist Wilfredo Cancio Isla revealed another decisive recording of the attack. Published in El Nuevo Herald in August 2006, the tape captured a meeting in which Raúl Castro acknowledged that he had authorized several generals to shoot down the aircraft without waiting for approval. “Shoot them down over the sea when they show up, and don’t ask,” he is heard saying. Cancio verified the authenticity of the voice with specialists continue reading

and with Alcibíades Hidalgo, Raúl Castro’s former personal secretary.

However, until now, the tape containing the audio recorded from the victims’ cockpit had never been released. Costa was piloting one of the Cessnas with Pablo Morales, while De la Peña flew the other with Armando Alejandre Jr. aboard. All four were killed when the Cuban fighter jets fired air-to-air missiles at the aircraft.

The microphone connected to Basulto’s headset captures the confusion and panic inside the cockpit. “They are going to shoot us down,” the pilot is heard warning. Then comes silence. “Charlie,” Basulto calls, trying to reach Costa’s aircraft. But there is no response. “Mike,” he insists. No one answers.

“This is the first time I have heard Basulto’s recording saying that we are next, that they are going to shoot at us”

“Both are down. They shot down both aircraft,” Martín explains during the report. By then, the Cessnas had been obliterated, and their wreckage had fallen into the Florida Straits.

An investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization concluded that both aircraft were destroyed outside Cuban airspace. The first was about 18 miles from the coast and the second more than 30 miles away, while Cuba’s territorial limit was 12 miles. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also determined that the victims were given no warning that would have allowed them to land or leave the area.

The new recording also captures the reaction of Sylvia Iriondo, who was a passenger aboard Basulto’s aircraft and survived because the third plane managed to escape. “This is the first time I have heard Basulto’s recording saying that we are next, that they are going to shoot at us,” Iriondo tells CNN. For her, what happened leaves no room for nuance or euphemisms: “They fired on unarmed, defenseless civilian aircraft in international airspace.”

“We are next,” Basulto warns. “The other one destroyed. The other one destroyed,” is heard afterward

CNN recalls that the families had already heard other recordings of the attack, some provided by the FBI and others played during federal court proceedings. But the cassette found in Martín’s archive preserves something different: the crew’s final communications and the moment those aboard the third aircraft realized they could be the next victims.

“We are next,” Basulto warns. “The other one destroyed. The other one destroyed,” is heard afterward. The victims were Carlos Costa, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran; 24-year-old Mario Manuel de la Peña; Armando Alejandre Jr., born in New Jersey and a father; and Pablo Morales, a former Cuban rafter who had previously been rescued by Brothers to the Rescue. Three were U.S. citizens, and the fourth was a legal resident.

For Mirta Méndez, a relative of one of the victims, the indictment recently filed in the United States against Raúl Castro and several Cuban military officers cannot become just another symbolic gesture. “We cannot have an indictment that remains locked away in a drawer,” she says.

When CNN asks how she imagines Raúl Castro appearing before the courts at the age of 94, she replies: “It doesn’t matter. He is still active and giving orders. So if he can’t walk, then in a wheelchair; if he can’t sit, then on a stretcher.”

Translated by Regina Anavy
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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.

America’s 250th Anniversary: Recovering the Soul of the Republic

America’s 250 th Anniversary: Recovering the Soul of the Republic

The CubanAmerican Voice, Julio M. Shiling, July 2, 2026 / The celebration of America’s 250th anniversary is more than a commemoration of national independence. It is an invitation to reconsider the moral architecture upon which the American Republic was constructed. To ask whether the philosophical inheritance that sustained the nation for two and a half centuries remains sufficiently intact to preserve it for generations yet unborn. Every civilization ultimately lives not by economics or military power alone, but by the ideas it believes, the virtues it cultivates, and the transcendent truths it acknowledges.

The United States was unique among nations because it was founded upon propositions rather than ethnicity, dynasty, or conquest. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that human rights do not originate in government but are endowed by the Creator. Government exists, the text argued, not to bestow liberty but to secure liberties that already belong to the human person by nature as an act of God. The Constitution translated those principles into institutions, creating a political order designed not merely to govern but to restrain government itself.

This remarkable achievement rested upon a synthesis of three intellectual traditions that together formed what has often been called the American creed. The first was biblical Christianity. The Founders differed in theology, yet they shared an intellectual world profoundly shaped by the Judeo-Christian understanding of the human person. The belief that man is created in the image of God endowed every individual with inherent dignity while simultaneously recognizing the reality of human fallenness. Liberty therefore required virtue; rights required responsibilities; freedom required moral restraint. As Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed, religion in America did not govern politically, but it governed the moral habits without which political liberty could not endure.

The second pillar was republicanism. Drawing upon the classical political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, the mixed-government tradition continue reading

articulated by Polybius and Cicero, the English constitutional inheritance, and later thinkers such as Montesquieu, the Founders possessed no romantic illusions regarding human nature. They understood that political liberty required both moral virtue and institutional restraint, for unchecked power invariably corrupts and fallen human nature cannot safely be trusted with unlimited authority. They understood that concentrated power inevitably invites corruption because ambition is an enduring characteristic of mankind. The constitutional architecture of separated powers, federalism, checks and balances, judicial review, and representative government reflected what James Madison described as the necessity of enabling government to control the governed while obliging it to control itself. Constitutional government was therefore less an expression of optimism than of political realism rooted in Natural Law.

The third foundation was classical liberalism. Individual liberty, equality before the law, private property, free enterprise, religious liberty, and limited government established the sphere within which citizens could pursue human flourishing. Yet American liberalism differed significantly from its later European counterparts. It did not understand liberty as radical autonomy detached from moral obligation. Rather, freedom existed within an objective moral order inherited from both biblical revelation and natural law philosophy. In this respect, America’s liberalism remained tempered by Christianity and republican virtue.

These three traditions together produced what Russell Kirk described as the permanent things—a civilization sustained not merely by institutions but by enduring moral truths. The Founding, however, carried within it a profound contradiction. A republic dedicated to universal equality tolerated human slavery. America’s original sin was not simply political inconsistency but an applicable failure that resulted in a moral contradiction. The Civil War constituted the nation’s Second Founding. Under Abraham Lincoln, the Union’s victory preserved constitutional self- government while abolishing slavery and moving the Republic closer to fulfilling the Declaration’s universal promise. Lincoln understood that the Declaration supplied the nation’s moral compass while the Constitution supplied its institutional framework. The Reconstruction Amendments therefore represented not a rejection of the Founding but its fulfillment.

The remarkable endurance of this constitutional order cannot be explained solely by institutional design. As Tocqueville recognized nearly two centuries ago, America’s constitutional success depended upon a vibrant moral culture nourished by churches, families, local communities, and voluntary associations. In modern lexicon, this is referred to today as a civil society. Political liberty rested upon moral self-government. The Constitution worked because Americans largely governed themselves before the government governed them.

The history of socialism in America illustrates this point. Throughout the nineteenth century, utopian communities, labor radicals, anarchists, and European socialist immigrants attempted to transplant collectivist doctrines onto American soil. Although prominent intellectuals—including Edward Bellamy, Henry George, Jack London, Helen Keller, and King Camp Gillette—expressed sympathy for various socialist ideas, these movements remained politically marginal. The constitutional culture, religious vitality, entrepreneurial spirit, and civic habits of most Americans proved inhospitable to revolutionary ideologies. Why has the situation changed so slowly but so dramatically during the past century?

One explanation is that the moral ecology sustaining the Republic has steadily weakened. Liberalism, itself a child of the Enlightenment, contained within it an impulse toward secularization. Once detached from its Christian foundations, liberty increasingly came to be understood as expressive individualism rather than ordered freedom. Consumerism, material prosperity, and technological progress filled many practical needs while leaving unanswered the perennial human longing for transcendence.

At precisely this moment, intellectual movements derived from Marxism underwent a profound transformation. Following the failures of revolutionary socialism in the West, thinkers associated with Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and later postmodern traditions shifted their attention from economics toward culture, education, language, law, and social institutions. What can adequately be diagnosed as cultural Marxism—a modern variation of Marxist ideology—weaponized these approaches and increasingly interpreted for society through the lens of relationships of power, domination, and identity rather than through the constitutional language of individual rights and equal citizenship.

Here Eric Voegelin offers a profound insight. Totalitarian ideologies, he argued, function as political religions. When transcendence is denied, human beings do not cease to seek ultimate meaning; rather, they relocate salvation into history itself. Politics becomes soteriology. The state, the revolution, the class struggle, racial justice, environmental redemption, or any number of secular causes may assume quasi-religious significance. The twentieth century tragically demonstrated the consequences of such ideological absolutism. Elements of today’s so-called “progressive” movement, including organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, reflect aspects of this intellectual inheritance that is antithetical to the foundational base upon which the United States was built.

America’s semiquincentennial therefore presents an opportunity for more than patriotic celebration. It invites national renewal. Such renewal cannot be accomplished merely through legislation or electoral victories. As Edmund Burke reminded us, society is a partnership extending across generations, sustained by inherited wisdom as much as by political innovation. Institutions cannot preserve themselves if the civilization that created them forgets why they exist.

Recovering America’s first principles requires restoring the moral and civic culture upon which constitutional liberty ultimately depends. Such renewal begins with recovering confidence in the nation’s Judeo-Christian inheritance, whose moral teachings long provided the ethical foundation of ordered liberty. It also requires strengthening serious civic education rooted in constitutional history, Natural Law, and the intellectual traditions of Western civilization, thereby cultivating citizens who understand both the rights and responsibilities of self-government. Freedom of conscience and religious liberty must remain vigorously protected, while families, religious communities, and other mediating institutions should once again be recognized as indispensable schools of virtue and civic character. Finally, publicly funded institutions should foster genuine intellectual pluralism and the free exchange of ideas rather than ideological conformity or political orthodoxy.

The American experiment has never rested upon the illusion that human beings are perfect. Quite the opposite. It has endured because it recognized both the grandeur and the frailty of the human person. Ordered liberty, limited government, constitutional restraint, and moral responsibility emerged from that realistic anthropology. If America is to flourish beyond its first 250 years, it must recover the philosophical synthesis that animated both its Founding in 1776 and its rebirth in 1865—a synthesis of Jerusalem, Athens, and Philadelphia, where biblical faith, republican prudence, and ordered liberty together formed the soul of the American Republic.

© The CubanAmerican Voice. All rights reserved.

A Quarter of Pregnant Women in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba, Are Malnourished

Malnutrition is also present in 125 infants, 4.5% of the 2,807 registered in the province.

Of the 1,393 pregnant women registered in Ciego de Ávila, 351 have some nutritional problem, including 88 with anemia.

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, June 29, 2026 — A pioneer in Cuba’s unprecedented worsening of infant mortality, the province of Ciego de Ávila continues to struggle in maternal and neonatal care. Of the 1,393 pregnant women registered in the province, 351—25.2%, or one quarter—have some form of nutritional problem, including 88 with anemia. The figures were provided by the official press itself in a report published this Monday.

The province is not only above the national average for malnutrition among pregnant women—which is already a significant 22.5%—along with Guantánamo, Granma, and Santiago de Cuba, but also exceeds the national average for infant malnutrition. Of 2,807 children under one year of age, 125—4.5%—suffer from it, placing Ciego de Ávila third in the country for this problem, behind only Granma and Santiago de Cuba. Among these infants, Invasor reports that 260 have an “associated social risk,” the official term used to indicate extreme poverty.

The province also lags behind in the number of maternity homes, with only 11 facilities for its 10 municipalities, two of which have “structural problems.” In three municipalities, the provincial newspaper continues, there is not even a maternity home, and pregnant women must instead be admitted to polyclinics. In fact, the article is illustrated with one of these centers, in Florencia, which remains closed and half-built, despite, in Invasor’s words, having been “scheduled for completion in the first quarter of the year.” continue reading

The province also lags behind in the number of maternity homes, with only 11 facilities for its 10 municipalities, two of which have “structural problems”

In the municipality of Primero de Enero, the maternity home is only 60% complete, according to the official media outlet, while Bolivia municipality “has a designated site but has not begun construction.”

In addition, Invasor reports that Ciego de Ávila “is among the provinces with the largest number of municipalities—all of them—that do not guarantee the delivery of all products stipulated in Diet 06.02,” the medically prescribed diet for pregnant women.

Shortages extend to cribs, mattresses, and even adult scales in medical offices. The province lacks 137 scales, “with no possibility of immediate replacement because they are imported equipment,” according to the provincial newspaper.

The figures do not clearly describe the situation regarding teenage pregnancy, but Invasor does report that 10 pregnant girls aged 15 or younger “refuse admission to maternity homes.” It is of little comfort that authorities report 29 pregnant women and two infants still awaiting layette packages, or that efforts are underway to “resolve” the situation of 48 pregnant women, 10 infants, and two children “without a registered home address” who are receiving neither diet supplements, layettes, cribs, nor mattresses.

The number of people “in preparation” to receive Home Social Assistance Services illustrates the scale of hardship: only 456 across Ciego de Ávila, Havana, Cienfuegos, Sancti Spíritus, Holguín, Granma, and Santiago de Cuba.

This precarious situation will undoubtedly affect maternal and child health indicators. According to the Ministry of Public Health, Cuba ended 2025 with an infant mortality rate of 9.9 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 7.1 the previous year, an increase of nearly three points in just 12 months.

During the last session of the Cuban Parliament in December, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero had already outlined the problem, reporting that the rate had reached 9.7 and acknowledging the “deterioration” of this health indicator.

The speed at which this figure has worsened nationwide is alarming. The trend was already evident by mid-2025, when the infant mortality rate rose to 8.2 deaths per 1,000 live births, nearly one point higher than during the same period in 2024. At that time, the arbovirus epidemic—chikungunya and dengue—which claimed most of its fatalities among those under 18 years of age, had not yet spread throughout the Island.

Cuba recorded 68,051 births last year, 3,108 fewer than in 2024, according to official figures.

Far removed is the situation in 2018, when the infant mortality rate was considered a model for the region. That year, the country recorded 3.9 deaths per 1,000 live births, the best figure in the entire Americas.

The same applies to maternal mortality figures for 2025. Health authorities reported a rate of 44.1 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 40.6 in 2024, noting that “the increase from one year to the next amounted to one additional maternal death.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The 1940 Constitution: Cuba’s Democratic Bridge

Julio M. Shiling | Jun. 12, 2026 / The possibility of a successful democratic transition in Cuba rests upon two historic advantages that distinguish the Cuban case from many other societies emerging from totalitarian rule. These advantages are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. Cuba possesses a republican tradition upon which democratic reconstruction can be built, and the Cuban nation that survived in exile preserved the cultural identity, historical memory, and civic traditions that the Castro-Communist regime attempted to erase. Together, these two realities provide the foundation for a constitutional renewal rooted not in political invention but in historical restoration.

The first advantage is Cuba’s own republican experience before 1959. Contrary to the historical narrative promoted by the Castro regime, Cuba was not a society without democratic foundations waiting to be liberated by revolutionary rule. Between independence in 1902 and the destruction of the constitutional order in 1959 (first derailed in 1952), Cuba experienced a functioning—although imperfect—republic. There were political parties representing different ideological currents, competitive elections, peaceful transfers of power, an active civil society, independent institutions, and a political culture shaped by constitutionalism. Cuba experienced periods of authoritarian interruption, particularly during military regimes, but these episodes did not destroy the foundations of republican life. Civil society remained vibrant, political pluralism survived, and the essential idea of Cuba as a constitutional republic endured.

The second advantage is the survival of the Cuban nation beyond the island itself. The millions of Cubans who went into exile did not merely carry personal belongings or memories of a lost homeland. They carried Cuba’s traditions, values, historical consciousness, religious practices, cultural expressions, and understanding of national identity. The exile community became a custodian continue reading

of a historical continuity that the communist state sought to sever. This preservation of identity is essential because democratic transitions are not only institutional transformations; they are also acts of national reconstruction. A society emerging from totalitarianism must recover its own historical narrative after decades of ideological manipulation.

For this reason, the 1940 Constitution represents a uniquely appropriate constitutional vehicle for Cuba’s democratic transition. The 1940 Constitution was the last legitimate constitutional text produced by a freely elected constitutional assembly representing Cuba’s major political forces and social sectors. It was the supreme expression of Cuba’s republican era and embodied the constitutional aspirations of the nation before the destruction of democratic governance. Unlike the Castro-Communist constitutional framework imposed after 1959, the 1940 Constitution emerged from popular sovereignty rather than revolutionary authority.

A democratic transition after communism must confront the past. This includes accountability for abuses, recognition of victims, restitution and reparations, institutional reform, and guarantees that dictatorial rule does not return. These are the essential components of transitional justice. Yet democratic reconstruction requires more than dismantling the structures of dictatorship. It also requires reconnecting a society with the legitimate historical foundations that preceded tyranny.

The restoration and modernization of the 1940 Constitution accomplishes both objectives. It provides a constitutional bridge between Cuba’s past and future. It allows Cubans to reconnect with their authentic republican tradition rather than accept the historical narrative constructed by Castro-Communism, which portrayed pre-1959 Cuba as a failed society requiring total ideological replacement. The regime attempted to redefine Cuban history around itself, treating everything before 1959 as morally illegitimate. A democratic Cuba must reject this historical rupture and recover the broader national story that existed before totalitarian rule.

Critics often misunderstand the proposed use of the 1940 Constitution by assuming that it would be applied exactly as written in 1940. That is not the proposal. Transitional constitutionalism requires flexibility. The interim governing authority would adopt the 1940 Constitution as the legitimate constitutional foundation of the transition while immediately suspending most provisions. During the transition period—ideally lasting several years—the country would be governed through emergency democratic decrees designed to stabilize institutions, restore rights, implement transitional justice, and prepare for elections.

The fundamental rights protections contained in Title IV of the 1940 text would provide an immediate constitutional anchor. These provisions include equality before the law, protection against discrimination, habeas corpus, due process guarantees, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, protection of private property, and the right of citizens to resist tyranny. These principles remain foundational to any democratic order.

Other sections of the 1940 Constitution also contain valuable institutional mechanisms worthy of preservation. Title V provides important protections for family, education, and culture. Titles XV and XVI establish meaningful municipal and provincial autonomy, limiting excessive centralization. Title XIV recognizes the importance of judicial independence and judicial review. Title XVII includes significant mechanisms of financial oversight through the Tribunal de Cuentas, a powerful anti-corruption institution capable of monitoring public finances.

After free, fair, and competitive elections, a democratically elected parliament could convene a constituent assembly responsible for modernizing the constitutional text. The resulting document would incorporate contemporary democratic standards, economic realities, and institutional safeguards. It would then be submitted to the Cuban people through a national referendum. The purpose of preserving the 1940 Constitution during transition is therefore not nostalgia; it is continuity, legitimacy, and national reconciliation.

The alternatives present serious problems. One option would be to retain and merely reform the current Castro-Communist constitutional text. This would be a profound mistake. That document emerged from totalitarian rule and lacks democratic legitimacy. Reforming it would risk preserving the legal foundations of the very system that transitional justice must dismantle.

The second option would be to create an entirely new constitution from nothing. While this may appear neutral, it would repeat one of the central errors of Castro-Communism: severing Cuba from its historical development. A new constitution without historical continuity would suggest that democratic Cuba has no roots, no inheritance, and no institutional memory. That would echo the revolutionary claim that the nation began anew in 1959.

Cuba is not a democratic orphan. It possessed an imperfect but functioning republic that was violently interrupted, not naturally exhausted or historically discredited. Its constitutional traditions, civic institutions, political culture, and national identity existed before the revolutionary rupture and survived despite decades of ideological transformation imposed from above. The democratic project after Castro-Communism should not invent a nation; it should restore and renew one. The Cuban democratic transition should recognize that Cuba’s future legitimacy will depend not only on building new institutions but also on reconnecting those institutions to the historical memory of the Cuban people. This includes embracing the constitutional ideals that preceded communist tyranny. A free Cuba must recover the understanding that democracy is not an import but a national inheritance.

Some objections to the 1940 Constitution deserve consideration. Some mistakenly describe it as a socialist constitution. This reflects confusion between socialism and social democracy or Christian democratic traditions. The constitutional assembly of 1939 included communists, but they represented only a minority. The document was primarily shaped by Cuba’s mainstream political traditions: liberals, conservatives, social democrats, and other democratic forces. Its social provisions reflected the constitutional trends of the twentieth century, not communist ideology.

Others argue that the Constitution is outdated. Age alone, however, does not determine constitutional value. Many successful democracies continue to rely on historic constitutional texts because legitimacy often comes from continuity as much as from contemporary drafting. The strongest criticism is that the 1940 Constitution is excessively detailed and attempts to regulate areas that modern constitutions typically leave to legislation. This criticism has merit. It is precisely why modernization is necessary. The objective is not to preserve every article but to preserve the constitutional lineage.

The most important question is not whether Cuba should return mechanically to 1940. The question is whether a free Cuba should reconnect with its own constitutional heritage. The answer should be yes. The 1940 Constitution offers something essential after decades of kleptocratic communist dictatorship: legitimacy, historical continuity, and healing. By adapting this historic document to modern democratic realities and submitting it to popular approval, Cuba can begin reconstruction not as a nation searching for an identity, but as a nation reclaiming one.

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© The CubanAmerican Voice. All rights reserved.

Julio M. Shiling is a political scientist, writer, columnist, lecturer, media commentator, and director of Patria de Martí and The CubanAmerican Voice. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. He is a member of The American Political Science Association, The PEN Club (Cuban Writers in Exile Chapter) and the Academy of Cuban History in Exile.

Castroism’s Empire Crumbles

Castroism’s Empire Crumbles

By Julio M. Shiling | Jun. 5, 2026 — For decades, opponents of economic pressure against the Castro-Communist regime insisted that sanctions did not work. According to this conventional wisdom, Havana had learned to survive every restriction, adapt to every obstacle, and transform every hardship into political propaganda. Yet the dramatic developments following President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14404 have exposed the weakness of that argument. The events of the past month demonstrate that sanctions not only work, but that they work most effectively when they are designed around a clear understanding of the regime’s actual structure and sources of power.

Signed on May 1, 2026, Executive Order 14404 represents the most serious challenge ever directed against the financial architecture that has sustained Castro-Communism since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rather than focusing exclusively on individual officials or symbolic restrictions, the order targets the extensive network of foreign corporations, investors, banks, shipping companies, hotel operators, and commercial partners. These have enabled the regime to survive long after the disappearance of Soviet subsidies.

To appreciate the significance of this measure, one must understand how the Cuban dictatorship reinvented itself after the fall of the USSR. The loss of Soviet support plunged the regime into an existential crisis. Faced with economic collapse, the leadership did not abandon socialism. Instead, it gradually developed a hybrid system that combined political totalitarianism with a form of concessionary capitalism controlled by the military.

The foundations of this transformation were laid through the Perfeccionamiento Empresarial process initiated in 1988. Under the banner of efficiency and modernization, military enterprises were granted increasing autonomy and economic authority. Over time, these military-controlled entities expanded into virtually every profitable sector of the economy. This evolution reached its highest expression in GAESA, the sprawling military conglomerate that came to dominate tourism, retail continue reading

commerce, transportation, banking, real estate, logistics, and foreign investment.

The result was not a free market but a military-commercial empire. Foreign investors entering Cuba were not investing in Cuban workers, Cuban entrepreneurs, or a Cuban middle class. They were entering partnerships with enterprises controlled by the armed forces and aligned with the Communist Party. The revenues generated by these arrangements flowed overwhelmingly into the coffers of the regime while ordinary Cubans remained excluded from meaningful ownership, independent labor organization, political participation, and economic opportunity.

For years, international corporations willingly participated in this arrangement. Hotel chains signed management agreements with military-owned tourism companies. Mining firms entered joint ventures with state monopolies. Financial institutions facilitated transactions that sustained the regime’s hard-currency needs. Shipping companies moved goods through military-controlled infrastructure. In doing so, many of these corporations became indispensable components of the economic system that preserved one-party rule.

Their participation carried consequences far beyond commerce. The Cuban labor system has long violated the most basic principles embodied in international labor conventions. Workers employed through foreign ventures had their wages appropriated by the state, lacked independent representation, and were denied the right to negotiate freely with employers. While corporations enjoyed access to a captive labor force, the Cuban people remained deprived of fundamental rights. The profits generated by these arrangements helped sustain the very institutions responsible for political repression, censorship, arbitrary detention, and the denial of civil liberties.

This is why Executive Order 14404 has proven so disruptive. By imposing secondary sanctions on foreign entities operating in strategic sectors of the Cuban economy and on those doing business with military-controlled enterprises, the order transformed Cuba from a manageable commercial risk into a potentially devastating financial liability. Access to the American financial system, international banking networks, and global markets suddenly became more valuable than continued participation in Cuba’s shrinking economy.

The sanctions did not stop at foreign corporations. Washington also expanded, on June 4, its focus to the regime’s ruling families and the institutional pillars that have long sustained Castro- Communist power. The Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Miguel Díaz-Canel and his wife, Lis Cuesta Peraza; Manuel Anido Cuesta, Díaz-Canel’s stepson; and Alejandro Castro Espín and Raúl Alejandro Castro Calis, respectively the son and grandson of Raúl Castro. The measures freeze assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit transactions with American citizens, companies, and financial institutions. In doing so, they signal a growing willingness to target not merely individual officeholders but the broader network of relatives, intermediaries, and beneficiaries that has surrounded the ruling elite for decades.

Equally significant has been the decision to sanction the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and its travel agency Amistur Cuba S.A., as well as Minera la Victoria S.A. These entities have served as critical instruments of military control, neighborhood surveillance, international influence operations, regime financing, and political mobilization. By targeting organizations rather than solely individuals, the sanctions strike at the institutional infrastructure through which the dictatorship has exercised power. In the context of a future democratic transition, such measures reinforce an important principle: accountability must ultimately extend to individual figures, as well as the structures that enabled, financed, and perpetuated systematic repression.

The reaction to Executive Order 14404 was predictable. Before the June 5 deadline for sanctions exposure, a growing list of prominent foreign companies announced their intention to withdraw, suspend operations, reduce their presence, or distance themselves from the regime. Spain’s Meliá, long the largest foreign hotel operator in Cuba, began winding down management agreements affecting numerous properties. Iberostar followed with similar measures. Canada’s Blue Diamond Resorts announced its departure. Indonesia’s Archipelago International ended its operations. In the mining sector, Canada’s Sherritt International, one of the regime’s most important foreign partners, suspended direct participation and began winding down operations.

Shipping giants and financial intermediaries likewise moved to limit their exposure, while payment networks connected to Cuba experienced significant disruptions.

This exodus reveals an essential truth. The Castro regime’s post-Soviet economic model was never self-sustaining. It depended upon a continuous inflow of foreign capital, expertise, branding, technology, and legitimacy. Once those partners began departing, the vulnerabilities of the entire system became visible. The military-entrepreneurial class cultivated through decades of Perfeccionamiento Empresarial and consolidated under GAESA has now been deprived of much of its foreign investment capacity. As a consequence, the regime’s access to hard currency will inevitably suffer.

The significance of these developments extends far beyond immediate economic losses. What is unfolding today is the progressive dismantling of the institutional machinery that allowed Castro- Communism to survive after the fall of the Soviet bloc. The network of military enterprises, privileged monopolies, foreign partnerships, and state-controlled labor arrangements that enriched a narrow ruling elite is beginning to unravel.

That process carries profound implications for Cuba’s future transition to democracy. Transitional justice is not merely about prosecuting individual officials. It also requires exposing and dismantling the structures that enabled totalitarian rule. The economic empire built around GAESA and its foreign partners will inevitably become a subject of historical clarification, legal scrutiny, and public accountability once democratization begins.

Many of the corporations now rushing toward the exits would prefer to portray themselves as innocent business actors. Yet the historical record will show that numerous foreign firms knowingly entered partnerships with institutions controlled by a dictatorship that systematically violated labor rights, civil liberties, and human dignity. While responsibility for these abuses rests first and foremost with the regime itself, those who profited from the system cannot entirely escape moral responsibility for helping sustain it.

The rapid discombobulation of this military-commercial complex demonstrates that sanctions, when properly designed and vigorously enforced, can achieve strategic objectives that many once considered impossible. By targeting the regime’s actual sources of financial power rather than merely its political symbols, Executive Order 14404 has struck at the heart of the post- Soviet survival model that kept Castro-Communism afloat for more than three decades.

History may question why a policy sharing the clarity of these seminal actions seeking to deny funds to a criminal regime, was not exercised decades earlier. Nonetheless, it is better late than never. Ironically, on the day internationally celebrated as Workers’ Day, President Trump delivered a measure that directly challenged a system built upon the exploitation of Cuban labor and the enrichment of a privileged military elite. Whether intentional or coincidental, it may prove to have been one of the most consequential gifts ever bestowed upon Cuban workers. It delivered a decisive blow against the financial machinery that profited from their oppression and represented a significant step toward the day when Cuba can finally begin the difficult but necessary work of democratic reconstruction and transitional justice.

© The CubanAmerican Voice. All rights reserved.

Cuban Organizations in Europe Sign the Freedom Accord in Madrid

The ceremony, organized by Pasos de Cambio, brought together Cubans from cities across Spain and the rest of Europe in support of the Cuban opposition’s democratic transition roadmap.

MADRID, SPAIN — The Pasos de Cambio coalition held a signing ceremony in Madrid this Sunday for the historic Freedom Accord, with Cuban organizations from cities across Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland and Spain. The Accord was originally signed on March 2, 2026 in Miami by the two largest coalitions and forces of the Cuban opposition from inside the island and in exile.

The Accord was presented by Rosa María Payá, founder of Cuba Decide and coordinator of Pasos de Cambio; Brian Infante, representative of the Partido del Pueblo; Víctor Dueñas, Director of the NewGeneration Foundation; and Rocío Monasterio, for the first time as a member of the advisory board of the Fundación para la Democracia Panamericana.

Esperanza Aguirre, former President of the Community of Madrid and former President of the Senate of Spain, participated as a guest at the ceremony and shared her experience of solidarity with the cause of Cuba’s freedom from Spain.

Rosa María Payá stated at the close of the event:

“A moving gathering today in Madrid for the signing of the historic continue reading

Freedom Accord by Cuban organizations in Europe. Thank you to all Pasos de Cambio participants who traveled from cities across Spain and Europe to support with their presence and commitment our unity in favor of Cuba’s freedom. We are determined to work together for a free and democratic Cuba. The republic that will be home to all Cubans.”

Rocío Monasterio, who signed the Freedom Accord at the Madrid ceremony, declared:

“The Freedom Accord that we have signed today in Madrid is the path to freedom for all Cubans. It is of the utmost importance because of the role played by the unity of all opposition groups, and the unity of all Cubans — because all Cubans are now part of the opposition.”

The Freedom Accord establishes a three-phase democratic transition roadmap — Liberation; Stabilization and Reconstruction; and Democratization — culminating in Cuba’s first free, fair and multiparty elections in more than seventy years. It provides for a provisional transitional government with a limited mandate, the immediate release of all political prisoners, the restoration of fundamental freedoms, and the creation of nine specialized working commissions covering the principal areas of national life.

The Madrid ceremony takes place at a moment of historic acceleration for the Cuban cause: amid unceasing civic protests in Cuba, days after the United States government announced the indictment of Raúl Castro, and following the recent visit of Pasos de Cambio representatives to the European Parliament, where Members from across the political spectrum called for the suspension of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA) between the European Union and the Cuban regime.

The Madrid signing represents a concrete step in broadening and building the unity of Cuba’s democratic forces, and consolidates the Freedom Accord as a transition framework recognized on both sides of the Atlantic.

CONTACT: info@pasosdecambio.com

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About Pasos de Cambio

Pasos de Cambio is a platform of Cuban organizations, from inside the island and in exile, signatories of the Agreement for Democracy, which serves as a space to coordinate actions aimed at promoting a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba.

Honoring Pedro Luis Boitel and the Demand for Accountability

By Julio M. Shiling | May 22, 2026 | This coming Monday, May 25, 2026, marks the 54 th anniversary of the death of Pedro Luis Boitel, a courageous Cuban patriot and emblematic victim of the Castro regime’s brutal political prison system. Boitel died on May 25, 1972, after enduring 53 days on a hunger strike. He had launched the protest to denounce the inhumane treatment of political prisoners and the regime’s arbitrary extension of his sentence. Despite his critical condition, authorities failed to provide adequate medical care when he was moved to the prison infirmary.

Boitel’s death was entirely preventable. The Castro-Communist regime chose to let him perish. His sacrifice remains a powerful symbol of the thousands of Cubans who have suffered torture, dehumanization, and extrajudicial killing under more than six decades of communist rule. Boitel’s story continues to expose the systematic cruelty that defined Cuba’s prisons and the regime’s ruthless suppression of dissent. A horrific fact that remains true to this day.

Last Wednesday, May 20—Cuba’s Independence Day—an important development occurred when dictator Raúl Castro was formally indicted for the 1996 murder of four humanitarian pilots and crew members of Brothers to the Rescue: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales. The two civilian aircrafts were shot down in international waters while on a mission to aid Cuban rafters fleeing the island. This indictment, though long overdue, serves as a timely reminder that even the most powerful figures of the regime are not beyond the reach of justice. Time does not contain its exercise when the crime is of this proportion.

Raúl Castro’s advanced age should evoke no pity. The soul knows no calendar. At 94, he remains the same man, with the same soul. In 1959, for example, he ordered the Massacre of San Juan Hill, one of the most notorious mass executions in modern Latin American history, where 71 individuals were mercilessly shot without any due process. Hundreds of summary executions received his continue reading

endorsement. The system that he, along with his older brother, concocted oversaw the killing, torture, and dehumanization of thousands of Cubans. In the Latin American context, by way of their Marxist revolution export business, the victims list grows to the hundreds of thousands. Raúl Castro’s physical body may be decaying, but the malicious soul that drove those crimes has never changed.

As we remember and honor Pedro Luis Boitel this Monday, the recent indictment against Raúl Castro stands as a fitting prelude. It reinforces a vital truth. Justice may be delayed for decades, but it must not be ignored. Boitel was killed 54 years ago. The Brothers to the Rescue volunteers were murdered 30 years ago. In both cases, the perpetrators bear full responsibility. These anniversaries remind us that heinous crimes against humanity carry no statute of limitations.

The convergence of these two dates carries deep significance for the Cuban people. As the prospect of a free and democratic Cuba grows stronger, the nation must consciously embrace the imperative of justice. A future democratic government—or any transitional authority, even if temporarily operated by the United States—should place comprehensive transitional justice at the very cornerstone of its mission. This includes truth-seeking, accountability for the killers and torturers, reparations for victims and their families, and the moral restoration of a nation long scarred by repression.

The memory of Pedro Luis Boitel demands nothing less. His death was not in vain if it continues to inspire the pursuit of justice for all who suffered under the Castro regime. The indictment of Raúl Castro should be celebrated not merely as a legal action but as a powerful signal that the long era of impunity is coming to an end. Cubans both on the island and in exile must internalize this message. Justice is not optional. It is essential for genuine national reconciliation and the construction of a truly free society. Let us properly honor Boitel by committing ourselves to the idea that no crime this monstrous can remain forever unpunished. Justice delayed for more than half a century is still justice. This is the case, even if it is long overdue.

© The CubanAmerican Voice. All rights reserved.

J M Shiling autor circle red blue🖋️Author Julio M. Shiling
Julio M. Shiling  is a political scientist, writer, columnist, lecturer, media commentator, and director of Patria de Martí and The CubanAmerican Voice. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. He is a member of The American Political Science Association, The PEN Club (Cuban Writers in Exile Chapter) and the Academy of Cuban History in Exile.

A Tale of Two Cities: Havana and Washington on May Day

May 1, 2026, exposed two radically opposing political realities unfolding ninety miles apart. In Havana, the Cuban communist dictatorship attempted to stage its annual revolutionary spectacle amid visible fear, militarization, and growing insecurity. In Washington, the United States escalated its confrontation with the Castro-Communist regime through a sweeping executive order targeting the financial, political, and repressive architecture sustaining the dictatorship. The contrast was striking: one government desperately trying to manufacture the illusion of monolithic support; the other formally declaring the Cuban regime a continuing threat to U.S. national security and democratic values.

In Havana, the regime had originally planned a massive May Day mobilization at the Plaza Cívica — the monumental square later renamed Plaza de la Revolución after Fidel Castro consolidated communist rule. Historically, the plaza has served as the dictatorship’s preferred stage for choreographed demonstrations of revolutionary unity, giant propaganda rallies, and displays of ideological obedience. But this year, the regime abruptly relocated the main event to the so-called “Anti-Imperialist Tribune” in front of the U.S. Embassy. The explanation offered by state propaganda was predictable revolutionary theater. The real reasons were far more revealing..

The dictatorship feared poor turnout, despite available mass mobilization mechanisms. It feared images of half-empty plazas circulating across social media and independent outlets. More importantly, it feared the possibility of social unrest and spontaneous protest, particularly after the trauma inflicted on Cuban communism by the July 11, 2021, popular uprising. Thousands of Cubans across the island openly challenged communist rule in the largest anti-government demonstrations in decades. The memory of those protests continues to terrify the ruling elite because they shattered the regime’s carefully cultivated myth of universal revolutionary loyalty.

Security concerns also weighed heavily on the regime’s calculations. The appearance of the visibly frail and decomposing tyrant Raúl Castro beside dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel transformed the event into less a celebration than a display of dictatorial continuity under siege. Castroism’s rhetoric continue reading

was openly defiant and militant, sounding increasingly similar to the revolutionary absolutism and anti-Western hostility associated with the Iranian ayatollah regime, one of Havana’s closest ideological and geopolitical partners. This was not a workers’ celebration. It was a regime fortification exercise.

The communist dictatorship explicitly organized the May Day mobilization within the framework of the newly declared “Year of Defense Preparedness” for 2026. The Castroist regime has announced weekly military exercises, civil defense operations, and plans approved by the National Defense Council for a transition to a wartime footing in the event of conflict or internal instability. The atmosphere surrounding the parade reflected precisely that mentality. It is a state preparing not for prosperity or reform, but for confrontation and survival.

Military personnel, Ministry of the Interior (MININT) officers, intelligence agents, rapid- response brigades, and uniformed security forces maintained a heavy presence throughout the event. The symbolism was unmistakable. The regime increasingly governs Cuba, not as a confident political system, but as an entrenched security apparatus managing a population it fundamentally distrusts. The omnipresent deployment of coercive forces transformed what the dictatorship claimed was a celebration of workers into a demonstration of state intimidation and internal control. Rather than projecting revolutionary vitality, the spectacle exposed a government whose primary political instinct is surveillance, containment, and preparedness against its citizenry.

At the same time, the dictatorship attempted to manufacture legitimacy through mass political coercion. Havana triumphantly announced that more than 6.2 million signatures had been collected for the “Mi Firma por la Patria” (“My Signature for the Homeland”) campaign, a regime-driven initiative supposedly demonstrating national support for Cuban “sovereignty” and resistance to foreign pressure. In a totalitarian system, signatures gathered through workplaces, schools, party committees, unions controlled by the state, neighborhood surveillance networks, and government institutions cannot meaningfully be interpreted as free political expression. Participation in such campaigns is inseparable from intimidation, social pressure, and fear of retaliation. In Cuba, refusing to cooperate with state mobilizations can carry consequences ranging from professional marginalization to harassment, interrogation, or loss of opportunities controlled by the state.

The regime intended to project strength. Instead, it revealed insecurity. While Havana staged ideological rituals and militarized pageantry, Washington moved decisively in the opposite direction. On May 1, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order titled Imposing Sanctions on Those Responsible for Repression in Cuba and Threats to U.S. National Security and Foreign Policy. The order represents another comprehensive sanction charter directed at the Cuban regime. It significantly expands the legal, financial, and diplomatic pressure against Castro-Communism.

The executive order declares that the actions and policies of the Castro government continue to constitute an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and foreign policy. It further states that the regime’s conduct is “repugnant to the moral and political values of free and democratic societies.” The sanctions provisions are sweeping in scope. Under Section 2, the United States can block all property and interests in property under U.S. jurisdiction belonging to foreign individuals or entities operating in strategic sectors of the Cuban economy, including defense, energy, mining, metals, financial services, and security. The order specifically targets not only officials of the Castro government but also individuals and entities acting on behalf of the regime, those materially assisting it, and those providing financial, technological, or logistical support.

The order further authorizes sanctions against persons complicit in serious human rights abuses or corruption connected to communist Cuba, including expropriation of private assets, misappropriation of public resources, bribery, and political profiteering by regime officials. Even adult family members of sanctioned individuals may be designated. The message is unmistakable: the United States intends to target not merely isolated actors, but the broader ecosystem sustaining the dictatorship. By extending liability beyond formal state officials to financial enablers, intermediaries, and beneficiaries of regime corruption, the order seeks to penetrate the patronage networks that have long insulated Cuba’s ruling elite from meaningful accountability.

The executive order also dramatically raises pressure on international financial institutions. Foreign banks facilitating significant transactions for sanctioned Cuban individuals or entities may themselves face severe penalties, including restrictions on correspondent banking access in the United States or the blocking of assets under U.S. jurisdiction. These secondary sanctions substantially increase the financial risks associated with doing business with the Cuban regime. In practical terms, the measures are designed to further isolate Havana from global financial networks and deter foreign actors from serving as economic lifelines for the dictatorship.

Additionally, the order imposes a travel ban on foreign nationals tied to sanctionable activities connected to the Cuban government, suspending unrestricted immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States for designated individuals. It also prohibits transactions designed to evade sanctions and authorizes aggressive enforcement under existing emergency powers legislation. The inclusion of immigration restrictions underscores that participation in repression and corruption in Cuba may now carry not only financial consequences, but also personal and diplomatic isolation from the United States.

Thus, May Day 2026 became far more than a symbolic holiday. In Havana, the regime attempted to choreograph revolutionary permanence through coercion, militarization, and ideological spectacle. It visibly displayed a deep-rooted fear of its population. In Washington, the United States formally intensified its economic and diplomatic campaign against the structures of Castro-Communist repression. Two cities, two systems, and two entirely different conceptions of political legitimacy.

One clings to power through surveillance, compulsory mobilization, and security-state control. The other increasingly signals that the Cuban dictatorship’s repression, corruption, and destabilizing conduct will face mounting consequences. The juxtaposition of Havana’s militarized choreography and Washington’s expanding sanctions policy underscored the growing collision between a system struggling to preserve totalitarian permanence and an American political environment becoming progressively less willing to tolerate or normalize its existence. Havana’s pathetic May Day spectacle revealed their inability to effectively orchestrate anything convincing. It also underscored their pathological refusal to negotiate themselves out of power. The U.S. must now seize the moment and take its legitimate national security concerns to another level.

Author: Julio M. Shiling

© The CubanAmerican Voice. All rights reserved.

Cuba’s Official Social Media Celebrates a “Lit Up” City: Havana Regains Light and Buses for a Few Hours

Russian oil barrels are giving the capital a respite that will be short-lived according to the Cuban government’s own data.

“Looks like they’ve been given a shot of fuel,” commented a passenger as he watched two buses pass by one after the other. / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, April 22, 2026 – “Today at four in the morning I went up to the rooftop and was impressed. It had been a long time since I’d seen all of Havana lit up without dark patches everywhere,” a resident of Nuevo Vedado, whose building offers a view of much of the city, told this newspaper. The image, almost absent from the capital in recent months, sums up what happened this Wednesday. For a brief stretch in the early morning, Havana was almost completely illuminated again, and at dawn, several buses reappeared on the main avenues.

The national electrical grid managed to meet demand between 4:12 and 5:07 a.m., according to a press release from the National Electric Union (UNE). This 55-minute period without outages was a brief respite in a day marked by frequent blackouts. The UNE’s daily reports, published by Cubadebate, also indicate that such a window of uninterrupted power had not occurred since February 8th.

The change was noticeable on the streets before dawn. “I’ve seen some buses on the streets today, which haven’t been seen for a long time,” said a Havana resident who left her house early in the Cerro municipality. Another woman, at a bus stop on Diez de Octubre Avenue, summed up the scene with a mixture of astonishment and sarcasm: “There are buses on the streets today, what a miracle.”

The image of the return of electricity and buses coincided with a campaign launched by several pro-government accounts on social media the previous night. The most visible example was that of Vice Foreign Minister Josefina Vidal, who shared a post with the idea that “a fuel ship arrives in Cuba and the lights come back on,” echoing a message disseminated earlier, in Portuguese, by Mídia Ninja, a Brazilian alternative media network with an activist profile. Photos of a lit-up Havana and texts about the supposed energy relief circulated as proof of a visible improvement, at least for a few hours, in the capital. continue reading

“There are also people at the bus stops, which had been empty for a long time.” / 14ymedio

Off-screen, the perception was far less dramatic. “Looks like they’ve been given a shot of fuel,” commented one passenger upon seeing two buses pass by one after the other on a route where none had appeared in recent weeks. It wasn’t just the presence of the vehicles that was striking. “There are also people at the bus stops, which had been empty for a long time,” he added. During the worst days of the shortage, many of those corners had been practically deserted.

Since the weekend, the state press has been presenting the arrival of the Russian-donated oil shipment in Cuba as a turning point. The Russian vessel Anatoly Kolodkin arrived in Matanzas on March 31 with 100,000 tons of crude oil, equivalent to about 730,000 barrels. This fuel was processed at the Cienfuegos refinery because the Havana refinery is not operational, and according to the official version, gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and liquefied gas are already being produced and distributed from this refined product.

The authorities maintain that processing took between 12 and 15 days and that the distribution of refined products to consumption centers is being carried out in stages. These products, the government insists, will help sustain some electricity generation, transportation, and economic activity. According to this official account, diesel and fuel oil will power generating plants, while gasoline and other fuels will help move cargo, passengers, and services.

On April 18, the State newspaper Granma reported that these fuel derivatives were already being distributed throughout the country and were beginning to reduce disruptions to the electrical service. The same article added that the available fuel, although limited, would also be used for transportation and to support the economy. This is essentially the explanation that state media have used in recent days to accompany the image of a brighter capital with more buses on the road. Outside of Havana, however, the situation is far from similar, and in much of the country, blackouts continue with the same frequency, while any relief is barely noticeable.

The total amount of derivatives obtained would cover “around a third of the national demand for a month”

However, the National Electric Union’s own report qualifies the extent of the improvement. The agency reported that on Tuesday there were outages throughout the 24-hour period, reaching a maximum of 1,384 megawatts. For the evening of April 22, the forecast still predicted a deficit exceeding 1,100 megawatts. The early morning without a blackout, therefore, did not represent a return to normalcy for the system, but rather a brief respite in the midst of a crisis that remains far from over.

Even so, the government has insisted on presenting the arrival of Russian crude as a substantial relief. According to official statements reported by Cubadebate, the total amount of refined products obtained would cover “around a third of national demand for a month.” This phrase, repeated optimistically by officials, state media, and affiliated social media accounts, has become a central tenet of the official narrative in recent days.

In Havana, that discourse found a concrete, albeit brief, translation into daily life this Wednesday. In a city where blackouts and lack of transportation have become part of the landscape, 55 minutes without shortages and a few buses returning to the avenues were enough for many to believe, for a moment, that normalcy had returned to the capital.

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Cuba: Oldie But Goodie — Venezuela Now Has Imported Blackouts / Ciro Diaz

This video is under two minutes long. Originally posted in 2012, we reposted it in 2014 given what was happening in Venezuela. It seems even more prescient now, in 2019, so here it is again… and… now in 2025… here it is AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN!….

…in 2026

The subtitles appear to have stopped working.  Here are the lyrics:

IMPORTED BLACKOUTS – An original song by Ciro Diaz

Ohhh…. Fucking up a little island is nothing
Anyone can fuck up a little island
With few natural resources it was easy, to drown it in misery
But Fidel Castro loves the hardest efforts
That’s why he made friends with Chavez
To see if he could fuck up Venezuela

It looked like it would be hard
Because every time they dug a hole
They found every imaginable mineral
And the oil never stopped gushing

Only a president truly idiotic
Would allow his plans to embrace
The foolish ideas of Fidel and Cuban counter-intelligence.
And just like that ten years later, the job seems to be completed

Venezuela now has blackouts, blackouts imported from Havana
Venezuela now has blackouts, our experience was useless to them
Venezuela now has blackouts, blackouts imported from Havana
Venezuela now has blackouts, if they don’t hurry they will be left with nothing.

CITIZEN DECLARATION OF HEALTH EMERGENCY IN THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA

Refuting Cuba’s National Television News: Facebook Post by Alberto Arufe Rodriguez. Friday, November 21, 2025.

Proclaimed by the people of Cuba in response to the regime’s inaction and negligence. The Cuban Nation, in exercise of its popular sovereignty and in defense of the fundamental right to LIFE and HEALTH, formally declares a National Health Emergency in light of the serious epidemiological crisis facing the country and the current regime’s manifest inability to respond effectively, transparently, and humanely to the ongoing catastrophe.

I. Considerations

1. That the Cuban people are facing an unprecedented health crisis, with the simultaneous spread of arboviruses such as dengue, zika, chikungunya, and oropuche, among others, affecting millions of citizens throughout the country, including children, the elderly, and pregnant women.

2. That hospitals and health centers are overwhelmed, unable to receive new patients, and that medical personnel are working in inhumane conditions, without basic supplies, diagnostic reagents, essential medicines, drinking water, or a stable electricity supply.

3. That the epidemiological surveillance system has completely collapsed, as laboratory tests and clinical confirmations cannot be carried out, and that the health authorities are deliberately concealing the magnitude continue reading

of the outbreak to avoid international recognition of the crisis.

4. That the regime’s refusal to declare an official health emergency prevents the arrival of international aid, humanitarian donations, hospital supplies, specialized personnel, and logistical support from multilateral organizations and NGOs, blocking all avenues of assistance to the people.

5. That the government prioritizes tourism and the economic interests of military conglomerates such as GAESA—which controls more than $18 billion in assets—over public health, concealing the health disaster so as not to affect the income of the hotel sector or the privileges of the ruling elite.

6. That the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, although distorted in its democratic spirit, recognizes the right to life, dignity, and health of all citizens, rights that are currently being violated in a massive and systematic manner.

7. That the international community, in accordance with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Health Regulations (2005), has a moral duty to intervene humanitarily when a State demonstrates its inability or unwillingness to protect its population in the face of a health emergency.

II. Declaration: Therefore, the people of Cuba, in their sovereign and inalienable right, proclaim a NATIONAL HEALTH EMERGENCY, in order to:

1. Highlight the magnitude of the epidemiological crisis and break through the information blockade imposed by the regime.

2. Call for immediate assistance from the international community, health organizations, and supportive governments.3. Protect the lives and health of Cuban citizens in the face of the criminal inaction of the state apparatus.

4. Demand the immediate opening of humanitarian corridors to allow the free entry of medicines, medical equipment, drinking water, specialized personnel, and technical assistance.

5. Request that the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, the International Red Cross, and independent medical organizations officially recognize the Cuban health situation as a public health emergency of international concern.

6.Urge democratic governments and international financial institutions to enable emergency assistance and loan programs administered directly by humanitarian agencies, without the mediation of the regime.

7. Call on the Cuban medical corps, both inside and outside the island, to organize solidarity networks for care, information, and supplies for the benefit of the people.

III. Moral and humanitarian justification

Health is a human right, not a concession of power. When a government turns illness into censorship, misery into silence, and death into statistics, it ceases to represent the people. Therefore, this declaration is not a partisan political act, but an act of love, life, and national dignity.
The Cuban people cannot continue to die of fever, pain, and neglect while those in power protect their hotels, their banks, and their propaganda.
This proclamation is based on a universal principle: “Where the state abandons the citizen, the citizen has a duty to raise his voice for their life and the lives of others.”

IV. Immediate demands

1. International recognition of the Cuban health emergency by the WHO, PAHO, and UN.

2. Urgent creation of an international humanitarian medical mission to assist the civilian population.

3. Guarantee of free access to health care without political conditions.

4. Transparency in epidemiological information, with the participation of independent doctors.

5. Temporary suspension of trade or financial restrictions that impede the flow of health resources to the island.

6. Protection for journalists, doctors, and citizens who report on the real health situation.

V. Final appeal

The people of Cuba proclaim this emergency on behalf of the sick who have no hospital,
– the doctors who work without syringes,
– the children who sleep with fever without diagnosis or antipyretics,
– the mothers who pray for their families,
– and the elderly who cannot even access painkillers.

We urgently call on the free nations of the world, on people of solidarity, on humanitarian organizations, and on Cubans in the diaspora to join forces and save lives.

We are not asking for political intervention, we are asking for humanitarian intervention, based on the principles of international law and the universal defense of life.

Cuba does not need speeches, it needs help. Cuba is not asking for charity, it is demanding assistance. The people cannot wait any longer.

Proclaimed in the name of the people of Cuba, for life, truth, and national dignity.

Share this message through all possible channels so that it reaches as many people, institutions, organizations, and governments around the world as possible. Do it for Cuba.

Do it for Cubans. If you can’t do anything, just spread the word.
#CubaEstadoFallido #SOSCuba

Translated by Gustavo Loredo

Ten Cuban Players Attend the European Baseball Championship

Spain, the current tournament champion, has seven Cuban players among its ranks

Ernesto Martínez Jr. joins the roster of France (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, September 22, 2025 —
The European Baseball Championship, which began last Saturday in Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, has a strong presence of Cuban players. Ten players born on the island represent four different teams, including Spain, the current champion of the event, whose roster is more than 50% Cuban.

The Spanish team, which won 15-0 against Sweden last Saturday, has seven players in its ranks: catcher Omar Hernández, outfielders Frank Hernández and Félix Stevens, and pitchers Pablo Luis Guillén, Carlos Sierra, Royd Hernández and Rubén Menes. In addition, there is William Escala, born in Miami but with a Cuban father. Also, on the coaching team is Néstor Pérez Jr. from Matanzas, who played seven seasons in the minor leagues with Tampa Bay.

Spain, which seeks to defend the title won two years ago in the Czech Republic, lost its second game 9-1 this Sunday, precisely against the Czechs. William Escala, whose father is Cuban, played in this game. In Spain’s last game this Monday, they won 2-1 against Germany and are waiting to know their future, once all the games have concluded. continue reading

Noel González is on the Italian team, which began with a resounding 18-0 victory against Switzerland

Noel González, from Holguín, is on the Italian team, which began with a resounding 18-0 victory against Switzerland; he will play his second European tournament with them. After finishing ninth in the disputed edition two years ago, the Italians intend to return to the podium, something they have not achieved since 2021, which is an outstanding debt for the second team to win more times in the history of the competition with 10 championships, only behind the Netherlands, which has 24.

Another Holguín player will be part of the contest, but with the colors of France. Ernesto Martínez Jr. leads the roster and will have his second participation in a European tournament with that team. In the past, in the Czech Republic, he hit .286, with a home run and three RBIs. He is also the only player of his team with a contract in the major leagues, since the rest of the players are part of teams from the Netherlands, Italy and France.

Finally, Raxon Martínez Miranda from Pinar del Río is playing with Belgium and experiencing his first international event with that country. He was not in his team’s debut on Saturday, which lost 16-8 to Austria, although he played on Sunday against Hungary (19-9 victory) and is playing this Monday against Croatia (game in progress).

Raxon Martínez Miranda, from Pinar del Río, is playing with Belgium, experiencing his first international event with that country

Raxon left Cuba after marrying a Belgian citizen about five years ago. He has played for Belgium in the first division of baseball in the 2022 to 2025 seasons (in the first three championships with the club Brasschaat Braves and in the last one with Deurne Spartans). The 29-year-old pitcher played in Cuba’s U23 National Championship in the 2019 sixth edition and had 60 turns at bat; he scored 10, with 11 hits, two triples and four RBIs.

If Spain manages to win, it would be the third European Baseball Championship in their showcase. For this edition, the tournament — which opened in 1954 — has the participation of 16 countries. The final round will be played from September 25 to 27 in Rotterdam. The semi-finals are scheduled for Friday, September 26, followed by the bronze medal match and the final next Saturday.

Translated by Regina Anavy
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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.

Zenaida and Manuel Return to the Freedom Tower 60 Years Later

Thousands of Cuban refugees passed through this Miami building, which is now being reopened as a museum of the exodus.

The Freedom Tower, located on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami. / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, María Casas, Miami, 21 September 2035 — A food delivery robot passes by the imposing facade. Around it, skyscrapers and cranes dominate the landscape. Much has changed in Miami since 1925 when the building that houses the Freedom Tower was completed, a structure that opened its doors to thousands of Cuban refugees and is now reopening as a museum commemorating an exodus that has continued unabated for six decades.

Zenaida and Manuel arrived this Saturday afternoon at the gate through which, without having met yet, they had passed as children. The news of the reopening of the Freedom Tower last week reached the ears of these two septuagenarians and, wearing a white dress for her and an impeccably ironed shirt for him, they decided to return to the place where “they gave me the first hug when I arrived here,” Zenaida tells 14ymedio. “They handed out bags of powdered milk that were a blessing,” Manuel adds.

Located on Biscayne Boulevard, the Freedom Tower underwent a profound renovation that took two-years and cost $25 million. The project included significant structural repairs but, above all, a redesign of its collections, adding extensive audiovisual material, voices, testimonies, and the ability to interact with some of the exhibits, creating a museum tailored to each visitor.

With a deep sigh, Zenaida and Manuel begin their tour. About twenty people have gathered for a guided tour, which will end with a tasty cortadito or a glass of champagne, according to their taste. In October, the tower will reopen to regular visitors, but for now, these groups, who tour its spacious halls, enjoy a more intimate and serene experience.

The project included significant structural repairs but, above all, a redesign of its collections, including the addition of extensive audiovisual material. / 14ymedio

Closed since 2023 and declared a National Historic Landmark 15 years earlier, the building retains many of the architectural elements from its original function as the headquarters and printing plant of The Miami News. Most visitors this Saturday opt for the stairs instead of the elevator and end up in a vast hall with columns and large windows. Zenaida and Manuel clasp hands; the place is familiar but much changed.

“I was very little, but I remember my mother was very distressed,” recalls the native of Manzanillo who came to the United States in 1965. Meanwhile, the guide shows several replicas of the tower placed throughout the room, which function as information stations with videos and holograms that review the most important moments of the building. “They helped my aunt fix a tooth here,” adds Zenaida.

The group is diverse. There are a couple of tourists who look like they’ve just stepped off one of the cruise ships that arrive weekly at the port of Miami, several Americans, and many Cubans, most of them over 65. The city Manuel arrived at in 1963 “wasn’t like anything here; it’s another world,” reflects the exile from Luyanó, Havana. There are also some refugees who have joined the tour with their children, who have probably never set foot on the island and whose primary language is English.

“Look, look, she looks like your grandmother,” says a woman dressed in green, accompanied by a teenager who looks up from his phone to look at one of the photos. In the image, a very thin woman with a sad expression stares directly into the lens. The young man responds with a brief “OK” and returns to a TikTok video. The group moves to another room with books full of illustrations about Florida, its original inhabitants, and the multiple cultures that have shaped the Miami that many today call the City of the Sun or the capital of Latin America.

On one of the walls, a text clarifies that to be at a “crossroads” is to find oneself at a “connective node that acts as a meeting point.” This is what the city has become, a place that in official Cuban propaganda continues to be the target of the most virulent adjectives and the most irate accusations. The island in flight has nurtured and shaped a city where all kinds of accents are now heard, and where people eat yuca with mojo sauce and arepas, fried plantains, and tacos.

“We were going to have all this in Havana,” the woman dressed in green reiterates, trying to draw the teenager away from the screen. Through the window, a huge skyscraper occupies a large part of the landscape. The guide quickens her pace and enters another room with a large screen showing a video of faces and testimonies from exile. The past in black and white, the present in color.

The group is diverse. There are a couple of tourists who look like they’ve just gotten off one of the cruise ships that arrive weekly at the port of Miami, several Americans, and many Cubans. / 14ymedio

Objects pile up in the following rooms. There are suitcases, bags, travel documents, children’s clothes, and a doll, as well as photographs of balseros, rafters. Dozens of Cubans crowded onto a flimsy boat, and others perched on a truck converted into a vessel. Also visible are shirts, a wedding dress, books, and a fan. These were the few belongings the exiles were able to take with them. Most arrived with only the clothes on their backs.

“They took everything from my father: the apartment building he rented, the pharmacy, and the cars,” Manuel tells this newspaper. “My mother even had to leave her wedding ring behind because at the Havana airport they told her she couldn’t take it out.” A prosperous businessman in Cuba, Manuel’s father arrived in the United States penniless. “He had to start from scratch, but he had a flair for business, so in less than ten years he was running several car repair shops,” Manuel says.

The most moving moment for the couple is the room that recreates the registration office of the Emergency Center for Cuban refugees, which was founded in the 1960s in the tower. The office was used to process and document exiles and provide them with medical and dental services. The chairs arranged in rows, the signs in English and Spanish, and the old telephone in the corner bring a wave of emotions to Zenaida.

“It was like that, there were a lot of women with children,” she says. “They gave my family a few dollars to start, and with that, we were able to rent an apartment that was a tiny thimble; there was barely enough room for all of us to fit in.” Within a few years, they moved to Kansas City, where shortly after, her father started a photo development and printing business. “We made good money, and when we had enough to buy a house, we returned to Miami because this was the place we liked and that reminded us of Cuba.”

Zenaida and Manuel have never returned to the island. “We’ve been gradually removing the family we had left there; the last one we brought back was a great-niece with her two children.” From Manzanillo and Luyanó, they receive snatches of stories. “My family’s house is an office used to recruit young men for military service,” she says. “The place where I spent my childhood in Havana fell into ruin,” he laments.

Many of those who left in the 1960s and 1970s never returned to the island. / 14ymedio

In one room of the museum, a Singer sewing machine draws the group’s attention. Even the teenager leaves TikTok and tries to decipher the purpose of the object that, in a display case, seems so important. Sewing was a source of employment for many of the Cuban emigrants who came to the US. “My mother paid for our studies by making everything on her machine and ended up opening a shop selling elegant dresses,” another elderly woman explains, responding to the guide’s comments.

A large wall filled with faces offers another moving experience. Visitors can choose to listen to the testimony of any of the hundreds of people who look down on them from the walls. The voice of writer Luis Felipe Rojas speaks of living without fear and the importance of telling the truth. The exile, harshly repressed in Cuba for his work as an independent journalist, maintains that his children will be better human beings because they have grown up in an environment where they do not have to pretend or feign an ideology.

Zenaida’s eyes are red, and Manuel’s pace is slower. The tour is over, and she opts for a coffee, while he enjoys champagne. Outside, it is starting to rain.

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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.