Will Cuba be Venezuela 2.0?

Like Lenin in Russia and Mao in China, Castro replaced a corrupt government when he came to power.  Like Lenin and Mao, Castro replaced one form of totalitarianism with another. Unlike communism in the USSR and China, communism in Cuba has proven durable. Decades of US trade sanctions, subversion and assassination plots failed to dislodge the grip of the Castro family.

Partly, this is owing to subsidy by the USSR. But the USSR has been gone for 35 years and the Castro regime still stands.

I can’t help but wonder whether a better approach would have been for the US to encourage trade and tourism with Cuba, forcing the regime to explain to its people why they should eschew the bright shiny objects and opportunities of capitalism for the drab life under communism. The carrot instead of the stick. Trust capitalism and human nature.

Now, the Trump Administration is once again reaching for the stick. 

“On Wednesday, federal prosecutors announced criminal charges against former Cuban president Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes operated by a Miami-based exile group. The indictment marked a major escalation in the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Cuba’s socialist government.


“The move comes as Cuba faces deepening economic turmoil that has left many Cuban Americans in the Boston area anxiously trying to support relatives and friends still on the island. Across New England, members of the Cuban diaspora are grappling with how to separate the effects of decades of US sanctions from the Cuban government’s own political repression and economic mismanagement.”

The US indicted Maduro before kidnapping him. It looks to me like the Trump Administration, keen to distract from the Epstein files and the failed adventure in Iran, is setting the stage for what it regards as another quick political decapitation. While the Cuban government has taken on many of the sclerotic features of Soviet late-stage communism, it’s clear that Trump isn’t concerned about the Cuban people, only his political optics.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/24/metro/boston-cuban-americans-castro/

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