Key messages
- The chances of an end to the Castrista regime in Cuba have increased following the extraction of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela.
- The misrule perpetrated by the regime has worsened in recent years, causing a profound crisis visible at various levels.
- The GAESA holding company, theoretically controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) but in reality in the hands of the Castro family, has enabled a constant syphoning of resources away from the public policy areas designed to help the population.
- The FAR could play an essential role in a transition in the absence of the Castro family.
Analysis
Introduction
In the wake of the successful and decisive operation to extract Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela, experts and analysts are debating whether it is possible for the Cuban dictator to be next in line. This scenario has gained traction with Donald Trump’s new executive order declaring a national emergency and establishing a process for imposing tariffs on products originating from countries that sell or supply oil to Cuba on the pretext of protecting the US’s national security and foreign policy from the actions, alliances and policies promoted by the Cuban regime.
Cubans on the island are enduring days of great tension, marked by a severe humanitarian crisis –which started with neither Maduro’s extraction nor the US’s newly ramped-up pressure but much earlier– characterised by power cuts, the non-availability of foods and medicine, and a crisis in the health system and in the supply of drinking water. Nor did the government devote 100% of the oil received from Venezuela, Mexico and Russia to the economy and the population’s well-being. Between 2024 and 2025 around 60% of the oil from Venezuela was re-exported to Asian markets by Cuba Metales, a corporation linked to the GAESA conglomerate. The proceeds of these sales ended up in its bank accounts in tax havens. Up to 40% of what remained in Cuba was funnelled towards the needs of the repressive regime and the GAESA-controlled tourism sector. At the back of the queue were the energy needs of the public. If Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican President, was induced into believing that her oil donations were of a humanitarian nature to aid the Cuban people, she was deceived. The humanitarian crisis that some attribute to Trump already existed before he became President.
Against a backdrop of growing popular discontent, the Cuban government finds itself enveloped in a highly tense atmosphere given the signals coming out of Washington. The drastic hardening of the US line under the Trump Administration –including the punitive trade tariffs on oil supplies, which Havana dubs a ‘blockade’, as though the ships moored off Venezuela were now sailing towards the island– coincides with almost complete black-outs, lengthy queues for petrol, night-time cacerolazos (pot-banging protests), military deployments (which serve only to emphasise their inferiority in the face of any US initiative) and a visible reinforcement of the repressive apparatus.
Since the second half of 2024 Cuba has suffered its worst structural, generalised and chronic humanitarian crisis under the regime’s rule, a crisis that shows a sharp trend towards deterioration. This is no longer a set of adverse economic circumstances but rather a simultaneous collapse of the productive, energy and healthcare systems and basic social welfare, which has obliged large sections of society to go into survival mode. To a significant extent the state has lost its ability to govern and provide essential services. All the classic indicators of governability score negatively and are in constant decline: electricity supplies, access to drinking water, healthcare, transport, public safety, availability of food and institutional credibility. This deterioration –which dates back much earlier than the US military intervention in Caracas and the new measures Washington has imposed on Cuba– is exacerbated week after week, with no sign of abatement.
Perhaps the most serious threat to the stability of the government is not the economic crisis per se but the fact that the apparatus for psychologically manipulating the population has lost its ability to shape public perceptions. The Communist Party has alienated a large section of its own militants and its former bases of popular support. The vast majority of Cubans do not believe either in the party or its leaders; if anything, they detest them, although for obvious reasons they refuse to say so in front of foreign journalists. The nonagenarian and octogenarian leaders of the hard line, ensconced at the summit of power, have lost their sense of reality. Their imaginary world seems to be tethered to the 1960s. Added to this is the state of shock they suffered, particularly the military, on witnessing the inability of their intelligence and personal protection services to prevent Maduro’s extraction. Their defeat has earned ridicule for the rhetoric of entrenchment that leaders such as Miguel Díaz-Canel and the chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez, have sought to impose. When the country has barely enough petrol to last six to eight weeks, everything indicates that the complete paralysis and eventual demise of the regime is not only possible but extremely likely and even imminent: at the start of, or mid-way through, the summer.
Internal factors
The economic collapse is profound and multi-sectoral. Foreign debt exceeds US$46 billion, remittances have fallen by around 70%, tourist income has shrunk 68.15% in comparison with pre-pandemic times and its complete disappearance seems inevitable at some point in the year. Income from exporting medical services has declined 53.55%. The historically strategic sugar industry has stopped exporting and now the sugar needed for domestic consumption is imported. Foreign investment is virtually non-existent and the energy network has entered a state of technical bankruptcy, incapable of generating 40% of daily electricity needs even before losing the Venezuelan oil.
The public health system has entered a situation of functional stasis. More than 70,000 healthcare workers have left the country in the last three years –doctors, nurses, technicians and paramedics–, which has laid waste to its operating capacity, leaving the population with no access to basic medical care. Hospitals are at a standstill, as the epidemiological situation indicates. People prefer to remain ill at home than die in hospital. Spending on the health system –almost 2%– continues to be minimal while spending on tourism (more than 30%) is prioritised, despite the failure to attract visitors.
The State exhibits advanced signs of institutional fragility. Its administrative structures are ill-suited to the social reality, run with the utmost inefficiency, and have lost all capacity for effective control. The governing elite has ceased to exercise ideological hegemony: these days, most people are either openly dissident or find themselves in a phase of passive divorce from the system, as is evident from social media. The Internet has burst the news and ideological bubble that the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) maintained for decades. The independent press has won the battle for the narrative over that controlled by the government. People no longer watch the national TV news, nor do they read official newspapers like Granma or Juventud Rebelde; they prefer to get their news from independent media such as Diario de Cuba, Cubanet, 14yMedio, El Toque and Cibercuba, or watch videos uploaded by the journalist Mario Pentón and others, which go viral on social media.
Almost two years ago the ruling regime entered a phase of increasingly precipitous operational decline. The system in which the new oligarchy decides and the government implements has demonstrated its unviability. No state institution operates efficiently, barring the apparatus of repression. The country’s economic and financial power is concentrated in GAESA, the holding company that in theory belongs to the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, FAR), but in practice is controlled by the Castro family and a group of loyal oligarchs. There are no generals in GAESA, apart from Ania Lastre, the current CEO of GAESA, who was recently promoted to Brigadier General. Raúl Castro has taken care to separate them from the country’s finances. He dislikes having internal enemies with financial power. The generals are focused on the ideological and institutional aspects of the army.
The elite keeps itself in power entirely thanks to the control it exerts over the organs of coercion: the military, the police, counterintelligence and the judicial system. Given the depths of the crisis, however, it is possible that the machinery of repression will also collapse in the coming weeks. This too needs electricity and petrol.
The government lacks a comprehensive, credible and coherent plan for tackling the crisis, and has been incapable of constructing reliable international alliances –whether governmental or private– that would help to alleviate it. Nor does it show any political will to reconstruct the old social pact, in which an admittedly repressive State ensured that the basic needs of the population were met. Nor has it shown any willingness to negotiate with the US. The failure of the ‘Cuban thaw’ provided irrefutable proof of this and revealed the true intentions of the Cuban regime.
The way national income is apportioned shows the utter disconnect between government priorities and social needs. Less than 5% of spending goes to critical sectors such as agriculture, public healthcare, social security and education, while more than 30% goes towards the building of new hotels –mostly standing empty–, which operate as money-laundering vehicles rather than real engines of growth.
The energy and financial situation is aggravated by a range of internal and external factors. Foreign debt, the loss of lines of credit owing to a poor repayment record, the low output of goods, the ever-greater decline in exports and the poor planning of investments mean that the government has seen its revenues slashed, and those that are still coming in are to a large extent appropriated by the GAESA machinery. In addition to this is the US control exerted on supplies of Venezuelan oil, which may extend to Russian, African and Mexican sources, and will put the island on the brink of total paralysis in very short order. Meanwhile, the country lacks sufficient storage capacity for fuel. The damage the US military has inflicted on the shadow fleet charged with transporting Venezuelan crude, a business in which the regime took part through GAESA, has obliged the Cubans to keep its tankers in port, for fear that they will be seized by the US. This comes on top of the deterioration to the electricity grid, whose obsolete plants have been running for at least 40 years and are constantly being disconnected due to breakdowns and emergency maintenance.
The availability of oil, according to the statistics and the analysts, will dwindle to almost zero in a period estimated to be between six to eight weeks from the beginning of February. Cuts to energy and water supplies now affect the entire island. Blackouts in the capital exceed 12 hours daily and in the rest of the country there are at most two hours of electricity per day. There are even places with no electricity for days on end. New mass street protests, similar to those of 11 July 2021, are possible and could be imminent; they will become more likely if the situation continues to escalate as the days go by.
External factors
The year 2026 started in an adverse international context for the Cuban elite, marked by the strategic foreign policy pivot in the US. The advent in Washington of an Administration that officially advocates an updated version of the Monroe Doctrine has reintroduced the use of military force as a foreign policy tool and identified a number of prime enemies in the western hemisphere: Venezuela, where a surgical intervention has already been executed; Cuba, putting the GAESA oligopoly in the sanctions crosshairs; and Nicaragua.
Russia’s geopolitical fragility and China’s economic weakness severely restrict their ability to come to the aid of their traditional western hemisphere allies. The passivity shown by Moscow and Beijing amid the major events occurring in Syria, Iran and most recently Venezuela bear witness to their inability –or unwillingness– to protect distant strategic interests. It is delusional to suppose that one of these powers might be prepared to make a significant economic or military commitment to keep Cuba afloat or to protect it from Trump. It is virtually certain that these powers will resign themselves and give up such alliances as lost. The likelihood of Chinese or Russian economic or military aid such as Cuba needs is nil.
The Russian attempt to rescue the Cuban economy failed. Dozens of Russian oligarchs spent two years trying to create mechanisms and make the necessary connections to kick-start an economic revival, which proved futile. The regime’s reluctance to introduce structural changs to the law, as their Russian counterparts requested, was sufficient to convince them of the impossibility of the rescue. The current Russian Ambassador has stated that it is the Cuban government’s responsibility to resolve the oil supply crisis, an unequivocal sign that Vladimir Putin has written Cuba off.
Meanwhile, the door that connected the regime to the EU is closing. The active alignment with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine caused a substantial deterioration in its relations with Brussels. Havana’s support for the war against Ukraine –in terms of propaganda, misinformation, diplomatic activities and, clandestinely, operations– has made relations as tense as they have ever been. The arrest in Lithuania of Cubans involved in sabotage as agents of Russia’s Central Intelligence Department (GRU) has made this situation even worse, eroding support for Cuba in such multilateral forums as the United Nations, something that could lead to major short-term structural changes.
For the first time, various European and Latin American countries abstained on a resolution condemning the embargo. In the new global scenario, renouncing or suspending the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Cuba cannot be ruled out. This possibility becomes more likely over the coming months, when there already exists an initiative in the European Parliament geared towards making headway in this direction. The regime has also lost allies and political capital in Latin America. The fall of left-wing governments such as in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Honduras, and the demise of Maduro, have virtually deprived the regime of its closest and staunchest regional allies. Lula’s government, formerly very close, has maintained a prudent distance given its reluctant stance on reforms and opening itself up to a market economy. Gustavo Petro has only a few months left as President of Colombia. Apart from minuscule groups, Cuba no longer inspires the regional democratic left, and if anything is rejected.
The regime’s most lucrative and opaque source of external funding has been abruptly cut off. As already mentioned, more than 60% of Venezuelan oil was sold by GAESA to third parties. With Maduro’s departure, this income has suddenly vanished. On top of this, medical personnel, who had been working in various countries, have started to return. The proceeds from the oil sales were not used to restore the energy industry, or to alleviate shortages of medication or food; they ended up in bank accounts in offshore tax havens.
The net tightens
While the regime’s room for manoeuvre becomes ever more restricted, the Trump Administration is giving increasing signs of preparing its final move. The pressure began with the imposition of major trade disincentives on countries that insisted on supplying oil. Licences have also been withdrawn from various companies in the south of Florida that traded with the regime, while others are undergoing review. Additional measures aimed at cutting the flow of funding to the regime may be introduced in coming days, such as the possible suspension of flights or the sending of remittances from the US requested by Cuban-American congressmen. Earlier, visa privileges had been withdrawn from the civil servants of various countries for facilitating the hiring of medical and paramedical personnel abroad. The US could play other cards in this regard, such as launching a plan to protect the medical and paramedical staff hired overseas in conditions of occupational slavery (with offers of visas or participation in telemedicine companies), which would leave the regime with virtually no income.
The renewed pressure has already started to make itself felt and has caused various actors to put contingency plans into operation, such as reducing personnel and closing some embassies and foreign companies in Havana. This is another unmistakeable sign of how tense the situation has become. The lack of fuel has paralysed production. Foreign companies present in Cuba are not immune to this situation. The subsidiaries of various international companies contacted by the EFE news agency have said off the record that the geopolitical uncertainty has caused them to reconsider their activity in Cuba. The two reasons put forward are the potential US military intervention, however surgical it may be, and the impact that the deterioration in the country has had on their activity, especially with the increasing blackouts and the critical shortages of fuel.
In recent statements, Donald Trump has said that he has asked the President of Mexico to halt shipments of oil, something that, although she has not acknowledged it, she has in practice accepted, meaning that Cuba has been left without a supplier. The only option is to negotiate with the US. Seemingly, despite the government’s rhetoric of not bowing to threats or holding talks under pressure, the Cuban authorities are thinking about exploring the possibility of talks. This is what Trump himself recently claimed and it was backed up by the Cuban government’s own communiqué: while cloaked in the habitual rhetoric, albeit somewhat less strident, it left a door ajar.
The fall of the regime is not only ‘possible’ but, with every passing day, ‘highly likely’
With all these factors militating against the regime, it is clear that it has little time left to make serious decisions. Its room for manoeuvre for financial survival is nil. It finds itself in a terminal tailspin and not even its repressive apparatus can continue. Meanwhile, its internal problems are getting worse because of its inability to reform itself (the system has shown itself to be unreformable, only replaceable), and while external factors besiege the regime the only option that remains is to acknowledge reality. It missed all opportunities to embark upon real reform, including with US (Kissinger, Carter, Clinton and Obama) and, later, Russian, help. The Cuban government’s rhetoric of entrenchment is unconvincing. The days of the current Cuban regime are numbered. It can close this chapter in a peaceful or painful way: this is the only choice it has left to make.
The only peaceful option would be for Raúl Castro and his family to abandon the country and initiate the first phase of transition as envisaged in the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (Helms-Burton). Castro ought to know that putting up token shows of resistance with no external allies and in the absence of widespread domestic support is suicidal. His weak and obsolete army would not resist and could not neutralise a surgical US operation. Castro must also know that he has two cases hanging over him in the Florida courts, one for drug-trafficking and other for the killing of four pilots belonging to Hermanos al Rescate (two of them US citizens) when their unarmed US-registered light aircraft were brought down in international waters by the Cuban air force in 1996. Castro was head of the armed forces at the time. Meanwhile, the US government has for several months been holding in custody Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, the Lieutenant-Colonel and pilot of the Cuban air force MIG who directly participated in the shooting down of the aeroplanes and is a key witness to the events. It will be possible to add to these cases all the information the US intelligence agencies have gathered about Cuba’s protection of the Cártel de los Soles (with Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro), plus all the information that the latter and his wife –and any provided by ‘Pollo’ Carvajal and others– may give the authorities in hopes of a deal to reduce their sentences in the trial both are facing in New York (scheduled to start in March).
Alejandro Castro Espín bears responsibility for the acoustic attacks against dozens of US diplomats. Hanging over Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Raúl Castro and son of the deceased Luis Alberto López Callejas, are indications of illicit enrichment and money laundering, given his dozens of journeys to Panama by private aeroplane in the last two years and his personal relationship with the Panama entrepreneur Ramón Carretero Napolitano, trustee of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores. Meanwhile, Mariela Castro and her Italian husband, Paolo Titolo, have a bulging file involving corruption and illicit gain. Titolo has used his familial connection and power to induce foreign entrepreneurs to invest in Cuba and has become one of the richest men in the country thanks to corruption. Titolo is the CEO of Amorín Negocios Internacionales S.A. in Cuba, a multinational giant of Portuguese origin, whose tentacles extend to energy businesses, real estate, tourism and finance. He is a key intermediary who has connected GAESA with European investment capital. As things stand, the best option for the Castro family is to leave the country. There are already viable plans for the transition so that it can pass off quickly and with immediate benefits for the population. It is a process that will be phased in, using the application of the Helms-Burton Act as its legal basis.
The military, GAESA and foreign companies in Cuba
One of the first measures of any administration that replaces the current government will undoubtedly involve an exhaustive investigation of GAESA, the origin of its assets, its bank accounts, its operations and investments, whether on the island or overseas. The focus of such an investigation looks set to take place within a conceptual framework similar to the US RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), which has operated in both licit and illicit markets. Foreign companies associated with the conglomerate will not necessarily have to face penalties if their dealings all took place within the legitimate economy.
Quite apart from these considerations, GAESA does not have any social group in Cuba –barring the tiny number of shareholders and oligarchs that work for it– with any interest in protecting it from its eventual disappearance or radical transformation. The truth is that it is a conglomerate that is neither owned nor controlled by the FAR, but rather a mechanism for the appropriation of national resources, finances of the oligarchy that it has privatised in its favour, and that controls the repressive and political apparatus. Indeed, the former Minister of the FAR and Hero of the Cuban Republic, General Leopoldo Cintras Frias (‘Polito’), was abruptly sacked from his post and from the Politburo of the PCC’s Central Committee when he tried to ascertain the truth of this oligopoly, supposedly subordinate to his command, over which he lacked any control and received no information.
The FAR –with the exception of their Military Counterintelligence (CIM)– have not participated in any notable fashion in the repression, nor have they been corrupted by the illicit operations of GAESA, nor are they seen by the people as part of the ostentatious oligarchy that has subjected them to misery. Hence it is an institution that could and should make a professional contribution to the process of change under a new defence doctrine that subjects them to civilian authority and charges them with a new mission –possibly in coalition with US forces– geared towards the fight against organised cross-border crime. The Interior Ministry, for its part, is a gigantic institution where units dedicated to repression (such as Section 21, counterintelligence, intelligence, the police, border guards –who have killed many illegal migrants after they have left the country–, prisons, etc) coexist with others discharging a range of functions (firefighters). An intelligent policy could restructure the institution and mete out differentiated treatment to each unit and person within it. If the transition comes about in a consensual way, this could lead to a more understanding treatment of such people.
Conclusions
For the first time in almost seven decades the dictatorship has only one viable option: to take a step towards democratic transition. This opportunity is not attributable to the regime’s voluntary recognition of the need to change the system, but rather to the population’s resistance to tolerating its deterioration and the Trump Administration’s willingness to put an end to almost seven decades of an ongoing threat to US security. For the first time, the regime finds itself in a blind alley, where no external actor will come to its financial rescue. For the first time since 1962, a US Administration has abandoned the appeasement of the Containment Doctrine and returned to direct confrontation to eliminate the threat (Rollback Doctrine) just 90 miles from its coast. For the first time, the regime has experienced the fear of being flattened by a strike of unstoppable superior force. Any gerontocratic resistance to the upheaval will thus be an exercise in futility.
The current humanitarian crisis was created not by Donald Trump in his first year in the White House but by the incompetence, ineptitude, myopia and avarice of an oligarchy that acquired its fortune not in any meritocratic fashion but by nepotism and theft. The possibility of exile for Castro and his family is a benign option that they should not spurn. They have Maduro and his wife as examples of the fate that may otherwise await them. There will be no luxurious exile if they resist, but rather justice that is long overdue.
