President Donald Trump’s administration is increasingly frustrated with what it sees as a lack of progress in convincing the Cuban leadership to open the island’s economy and political system, despite intensifying pressure from the United States.
American negotiators are having difficulty navigating what they see as competing factions — including the Castro family, the military, the Communist Party bureaucracy and descendants of other revolutionary leaders — according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
The two sides have yet to reach a breakthrough despite multiple rounds of negotiations in recent months and pressure from Trump to impose tight restrictions on the country’s energy supply. Havana stated, this Thursday (14), that it has completely run out of diesel and fuel oil for its aging electrical plants.
Meanwhile, the US is intensifying sanctions targeting the elites who control Cuba. Last week’s target was Grupo de Administración Empresarial SA (Gaesa), a business conglomerate managed by the Cuban military, in a strategy that mirrors what the US adopted in Venezuela when it began to seize oil tankers that benefited President Nicolás Maduro and his family.
Now attention turns to other international companies doing business in Cuba, including Spanish hotel operators, after the US signaled they had about a month to end any operations with the military conglomerate.
Asked about the matter, a White House official referred to Trump’s statements this week, in which the president said that Cuba is “a failed nation” that has been mismanaged for many years. In recent months, Trump has alternated between praising the negotiations and suggesting that the American military could “take a look” at the island after the end of the war with Iran. This Tuesday (12), he stated that the country is asking for help, adding that the US will make a deal with Cuba “at the right time”.
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The Cuban embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio want to remove from power Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and the Castro family — which has controlled Cuba since brothers Fidel and Raúl led the revolution in 1959 — as well as other families at the top of the regime. That goal has been hampered by the absence of a credible opposition on the island since then, one of the people said.
Fidel died a decade ago, and Raúl Castro will turn 95 next month, but younger generations have maintained control of the island, including Alejandro Castro Espín, Raúl’s son. He secretly negotiated rapprochement with the US during the Barack Obama administration, an initiative that Trump scrapped when he took office in 2017. Under Rubio’s guidance, the US has more recently been talking to Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of the elder Castro and nephew of Castro Espín.
Last month, a State Department delegation traveled to Havana for talks with the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Rodríguez Castro. It was the first visit of its kind by the US since the Obama era.
The Trump administration is also seeking other achievements in terms of economic change — such as the regime’s payment for expropriated assets — and the release of political prisoners, according to one of the people.
“Economic coercion and diplomatic pressure have not yet shaken the regime,” said Brian Fonseca, director of the public policy institute at Florida International University in Miami.
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Rubio and the State Department also accuse Havana of blocking Washington’s attempt to provide $100 million in aid via the Catholic Church in order to contain a crisis worsened by American pressure, which has caused recurring blackouts and affected hospitals, public sanitation, water supply and food distribution.
Rubio predicted, in an interview broadcast on Wednesday (13), that the Cuban economy is not expected to improve significantly as long as current leaders remain in power.
“Let’s give them a chance,” Rubio told Fox News. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I don’t think we’re going to be able to change Cuba’s trajectory as long as these people are in charge of this regime.”
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