The executive order issued by the White House on May 1 has shaken Cuba’s foundations. The United States decided to tighten the noose around an economy that was already in intensive care even before the new sanctions that took effect on Friday, or the oil blockade implemented earlier this year. Washington’s threat to freeze assets on U.S. territory of any foreign company or individual doing business with the Cuban regime — especially with the vast portfolio of businesses held by Gaesa, the military conglomerate that controls half of Cuba’s GDP — has produced its first effects. And once foreign companies withdraw, their replacement by U.S. firms appears to be the next step.

Within weeks, two large Spanish hotel chains (Meliá and Iberostar) were forced to abandon part of their operations, giving up management of 15 and 12 hotels respectively that were owned by the Armed Forces. That withdrawal, however, will not spare them from lawsuits by the Cuban government, which will demand compensation for unilaterally terminating their management contracts. Canada’s Blue Diamond and Indonesia’s Archipelago International have also exited their businesses entirely, while the shipping lines CMA CGM (France) and Hapag-Lloyd (Germany) have chosen to halt container deliveries. The exodus has not only hit tourism, the main pillar of Cuba’s economy. It has also struck mining, which accounts for a third of goods exports. Canadian company Sherritt International, which had a joint venture with the island’s government, disclosed a nonbinding agreement under which Gillon Capital, a firm linked to a former adviser to Donald Trump, would acquire a 55% stake.

Business sources close to the Cuban government summarized to EL PAÍS two weeks ago what they believe is the sole objective of the U.S. sanctions: “They want to take over the Galicians’ business” [referring to Spaniards who emigrated to Cuba at the end of the 19th century].

The first candidates could be Marriott, the world’s largest hotel company with 7,781 hotels, and Airbnb, the largest short-term rental platform, with nine million listings. Both have already operated or currently operate in Cuba under special licenses granted by the U.S. government during Barack Obama’s second term in the so-called “Cuban thaw.” They have never concealed their interest in continuing to expand on the island. Between 2016 and 2020, Marriott managed the Four Points by Sheraton Havana, becoming the only property operated there by a U.S. giant. Arne Sorenson, Marriott’s former CEO, was one of the business executives who accompanied President Obama on the March 16, 2016, flight that marked the start of that new phase.

Airbnb, for its part, landed in April 2015 with 1,000 listings, but was restricted to hosting only U.S. tourists. In its first year it welcomed 13,000 travelers and the number rose to 35,000 listings by 2019, once an exceptional permission was granted to host non-U.S. guests as well. From there the numbers fell sharply because of successive economic crises and the pandemic, despite relief measures approved during Joe Biden’s administration. The final blow came from a Department of State order dated January 31, 2025, which restricted Cuba’s access to international banking and forced hosts to find alternative payment methods abroad, collapsing the business.

A devastating outlook for Cuba

The picture painted by these initial moves, together with those that may follow soon, is, at best, devastating. For Max Meizlish, a former Treasury Department official from 2020 to 2024 and a researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), this is unprecedented pressure. “Washington’s pressure aims to definitively turn the Caribbean country into a financial pariah, without external sources of financing. Right now, what we see is that all these strategic sectors of the Cuban economy that have touchpoints with foreign firms are being pressured for the first time,” he concludes in a Zoom call.

The onslaught arrives at a moment of extreme vulnerability. In recent years the Cuban government has implemented a severe austerity plan that includes cuts to public spending, a reduction of the bureaucratic apparatus, lower subsidies and an unprecedented increase in basic service fees, alongside a partial dollarization of the economy that operates with up to three different exchange rates. As an extraordinary measure, the regime decided to allocate budget resources month by month based on its revenues. Not to mention power outages that in large areas exceed 24 consecutive hours. “This is already worse than a wartime economy,” Cuban economist Omar Everleny Pérez says by phone.

Other experts point to two intertwined founding errors: betting everything on tourism and giving the military free rein through Gaesa, to concentrate economic power in accounts that cannot be audited by the state. In 2016, the military holding now targeted by Trump launched an ambitious hotel plan during the thaw with Obama in a bid to reach 100,000 rooms by 2030. “We cannot wait for the blockade [U.S. economic embargo] to end to build the hotel capacity,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel justified. For Pérez, those economic mistakes have put a noose around the country’s neck. Or, put another way, they have made Washington’s job of strangling the island easier.

The crux of the matter, says Max Meizlish, is that the executive order leaves the door open for the Trump administration to further expand economic pressure. Among the options available is pushing international banks to freeze funds of entities tied to the government and its military leadership. “What I would expect from any of these banks that want to comply with the terms of the executive order is that they block them. Make them feel trapped. And have those funds moved so they are inaccessible to the regime,” the former Treasury official says.

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El expresidente de Cuba Raúl Castro asistió este viernes en un acto de homenaje por su 95 cumpleaños en lo que se trata de su primera aparición en público desde que Estados Unidos anunciara el pasado 20 de mayo la imputación del líder cubano por el derribo en 1996 de dos aviones civiles en aguas internacionales pertenecientes a la organización de exiliados cubanos Hermanos al Rescate.

El acto tuvo lugar un día después además de que Estados Unidos anunciara una nueva ronda de sanciones contra el presidente cubano, Miguel Díaz-Canel, así como contra parte de su familia política; contra Alejandro Castro Espín, hijo de Castro y a entidades como el Ministerio de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (Minfar) y los Comités de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR).

Castro recibió este viernes los elogios del presidente del país, Miguel Díaz-Canel, durante una ceremonia en el Teatro Karl Marx de La Habana donde el mandatario ha descrito a Castro como un guía nacional en un momento que “la patria vive horas cruciales, amenazada como nunca antes por el imperialismo” por el bloqueo de Estados Unidos, recrudecido a finales de enero, que está asfixiando al país.

“En los primeros cinco meses del año, Cuba solo ha recibido un barco de combustible, de 40 que habría demandado en ese período”, ha lamentado Díaz-Canel antes de recordar una segunda orden ejecutiva norteamericana, ya en mayo, “cargada de amenazas, de sanciones, decomisos, multas a cualquier empresa, banco, institución o persona que comercie o invierta en Cuba”.

Para Díaz-Canel, estos actos suman hacia un “un acto de genocidio que impone terribles limitaciones a la vida cotidiana de nuestro pueblo”. Frente a esta crisis emerge la figura de Raúl Castro como identidad nacional. “Raúl es Cuba y a Cuba no se toca”, ha proclamado el presidente cubano. “No se toca mientras queden una cubana o un cubano dignos con vida para poner escudo donde el enemigo pretenda poner la bala”, ha añadido.

El pasado 20 de mayo, el Departamento de Justicia estadounidense le presentó cargos contra el hombre fuerte del régimen cubano, Raúl Castro, de 94 años, y otros cinco militares por asesinato, conspiración para matar a ciudadanos estadounidenses y destrucción de aeronave. Los cargos, presentados en Miami en el tribunal del distrito sur de Florida se remitían a sucesos de hace treinta años: el derribo de dos avionetas de la organización anticastrista Hermanos al Rescate.

Díaz-Canel terminó un discurso con tintes historicistas con un llamamiento a “la paz” y al diálogo. “Cuba no provoca, no agrede ni desafía. Seguimos apostando por un clima de entendimiento con Estados Unidos sobre la base del respeto mutuo, a pesar de nuestras diferencias, como se demostró que sí es posible”, ha continuado el presidente.

It’s quite possible that the Cuban Revolution will soon die. Just over 67 years ago, it burst forth laden with hopes and redemptive promises. Biblical parallels abounded: there were 12 survivors of the Granma — the yacht that transported the fighters from Mexico to Cuba — and a messiah (Fidel Castro) triumphantly entered the new Jerusalem (Havana). A dove landed on his shoulder as he recited the divine word for hours on end, foreshadowing paradise on earth. Meanwhile, on the other side of the water — the Straits of Florida — the Yankee devil threatened this paradise from hell.

After 1959, a large part of Latin America’s Christian population adopted liberation theology. The most gifted philosophers, poets, painters and novelists placed their talents at the service of the good news. Countless creators exchanged their pens, instruments, or brushes for shovels, plows, or trowels, in order to bring their fantasies of social justice to life.

On April 17, 1961, two years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the Bay of Pigs invasion took place. The day before Brigade 2506 landed at Playa Girón, Fidel Castro declared the movement’s socialist nature: “Those who fear the revolution because it is socialist… let them not come asking us to kneel before imperialism.”

Ten days later, the author Norman Mailer published an open letter to Fidel Castro, in which he wrote that the Cuban leader was “the first and greatest hero to appear in the world since the Second World War.” He later suggested that Castro ask Ernest Hemingway to mediate for a better understanding between Cuba and the United States. But it was already too late: in 1962, Cuba allowed the Soviet Union to install nuclear missiles on the island, aiming them at its enemies.

If the 1960s are known as the romantic period of the Cuban Revolution, the 1970s ushered in the so-called Quinquenio Gris (“the gray five-year period”). The Padilla Affair, in 1971 — referring to the imprisonment of poet Heberto Juan Padilla — ushered in an era of cultural control and persecution of any expression that was considered “ideologically deviant.” Novelists, poets, filmmakers, artists and members of the LGBTQ+ community who didn’t adhere to the behavioral norms established by the regime were sent to forced labor camps, known as the UMAPs: Military Units to Aid Production. Authors such as José Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera and Reinaldo Arenas were also silenced. Many of the Latin American Boom writers who still harbored sympathies for Cuba definitively lost them during this period.

The tightening of totalitarian controls on the island, however, coincided with a series of U.S.-backed coups in the rest of the region. Cuba provided refuge to thousands of people persecuted by the military dictatorships. Had this not been the case, it’s likely that the democratic forces of the West would have more quickly become aware of the macabre atrocities that the Caribbean country concealed (there was no shortage of grateful leftists).

The 1980s, according to Cubans, were a rather happy time. There was a certain general prosperity thanks to Soviet aid. And, while the state security services exerted control, there was no shortage of spaces for relaxation. Recreational drugs were present in cultural circles, civil liberties were limited, but this was largely accepted without major conflict, and the country guaranteed good‑quality healthcare and education. Access to material comfort — despite not being luxurious — allowed for a certain carefree attitude.

Nearly 2,000 Cuban soldiers died in Angola supporting the MPLA, a social democratic party that fought for independence from Portugal. And, although many returned traumatized, the intervention was a source of national pride. At least, until some of its heroes — General Arnaldo Ochoa, Colonel Tony de la Guardia, Captain Jorge Martínez and Major Amado Padrón — were accused of drug trafficking and treason. Collectively known as “Case Number One,” they were sentenced to death: the four high-ranking officers were executed at dawn on July 13, 1989.

The most widespread interpretation of the trial, however, suggests that it was a political purge. At the time, the regimes of Eastern Europe were beginning to collapse. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had visited Havana that same year with his message of glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”). And Ochoa — given his popularity at home and possible sympathy for the reformist winds in the USSR — represented a potential threat to Castro. In the absence of serious journalism, all that remains is speculation.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the so-called Special Period began, a euphemism coined by Fidel Castro to describe the catastrophic situation that gripped the country after losing the USSR’s economic support. Cuba ran out of oil and blackouts began. Lacking food, people were even eating cats. From this era came the term resolver (“to solve”), used to describe that quintessential Cuban occupation: finding unheard-of solutions to everyday needs… usually outside the bounds of the law.

When talking about Cuba, there’s something that’s rarely emphasized: everyday corruption. State salaries aren’t enough to afford anything, so truck drivers steal fuel, food distributors sell a portion on the sidewalk, while traffic cops negotiate fines. Much of survival is “resolved” informally.

According to some, the Special Period never really ended. Most Cubans, however, agree that it ended with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who was elected in 1999. Although Cubans often looked down on Venezuelans, they welcomed the oil and dollars that flowed from Caracas — money that fueled opaque schemes few could fully explain.

On the island of the Revolution, nothing is produced at this point. Not even sugar. In its most fertile fields, there’s a proliferation of marabú, a highly-aggressive shrub.

The government has sold an idea, with no concrete product. It seems that Cuba’s leaders believe the world should pay them to preach a way of life which they don’t know how to sustain.

A few years ago, very few people still bought into this scam. Today, practically no one does.

The U.S. embargo exists, certainly. And that scoundrel Trump has tightened it by putting Cuba back on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, without considering how cruel this is for the vast, innocent majority. And, since January 30, he has prevented the arrival of ships carrying fuel.

But the failure of the Cuban Revolution is an undeniable fact. It was never capable of providing for the material well-being of its population on its own. When Fidel Castro was alive, what should have been a government by the people only served to glorify one individual.

If the Revolution has developed any expertise at all, it’s been in controlling its inhabitants through state security, intelligence and counterintelligence. During the Cold War, this made some sense, but at this point in time, it’s absurd.

Cubans are starving. They cook with charcoal. No one collects the garbage piling up in the streets; infections and stench are rampant. The population lives in darkness, while few young people remain. And, beyond those who work for the regime, it’s practically impossible to find a government supporter. If you want to find one, you have to look among foreign communists. Only ideological blindness justifies such indifference.

The Cuban Revolution — once the illusion of a new world where things could be different — has just received the CIA director and accepted a bribe from the empire, which may allow it to survive for another couple of weeks. Acknowledging the project’s resounding failure is not only urgent in order to rescue the suffering population, but also to return to an alternative where the idea of community regains its value; where not everything is about arrogance and force. The invitation to come together shouldn’t sound like empty rhetoric; rather, it should be an intelligent, credible and trustworthy proposal.

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