In this file photo, women walk past a private café in Havana, Cuba, on Oct. 6, 2021.
The Cuban government is expected to announce as early as next week economic reforms to allow Cuban Americans living in South Florida and elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world to invest and own private businesses on the island, the Miami Herald has learned.
The economic opening comes amid unprecedented pressure by the Trump administration, which has cut off oil supplies to the Cuban government, and ongoing talks between the two countries acknowledged by Cuban leaders for the first time on Friday.
“The return of the Cuban diaspora is imminent,” said one source who is knowledgeable about the expected measures and who asked not to be identified to speak of the sensitive matter. According to the source, the Cuban government is likely to allow Cubans living abroad to own private enterprises the Cuban government has labeled mipymes — pronounced mee-PEE-mes —the Spanish acronym for micro, small and medium enterprises.
The source said Cubans abroad are also expected to be allowed to invest in the private sector on the island, an idea Cuban Americans have been pushing for many years. The source expressed doubts that the government will quickly implement everything that it has already approved behind closed doors. In Cuba’s highly bureaucratic system, laws and regulations approved by the government have sometimes taken months, and even years, to be fully implemented.
The changes would legalize what has already been happening quietly, the source said, pointing out that many of private businesses on the island that have mushroomed around the country in recent years are financed with capital from relatives in Miami, the home of the largest Cuban exile community in the United States.
In a televised press conference Friday, Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel acknowledged that government officials have been in talks with representatives of the Trump administration, despite earlier denials and deflections. He also struck a conciliatory tone about “Cubans living abroad” — Havana’s preferred term for South Florida exiles, though the reference is broader — many of whom fled the island because of government repression and lack of opportunities.
“This area, the relationship with Cubans abroad, is one of the most important and decisive things we have to do,” he said. “The number of Cubans residing abroad or extending their stay has been growing and is therefore our responsibility as a government to welcome them, listen to them, assist them and provide them with a space to participate in economic and social development.”
Díaz-Canel said the country’s vice prime minister, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, who doubles as minister for foreign investment, will be giving details Monday about measures already approved by the government that would allow Cubans abroad to “participate” in the country’s economic development.
“We have conducted an analysis in the political bureau [of the Communist Party] and the government of the country, and I believe that the new actions that will be made will resolve almost all of the concerns raised by Cubans” abroad, he said.
The economic opening for Cuban exiles comes after President Donald Trump said he wanted Cuban Americans to be able to go back and helped rebuild the country, whose infrastructure is crumbling and which is undergoing a severe economic crisis. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also urged Cuban leaders to make “dramatic” economic changes as a path forward.
Obstacles ahead
There are many obstacles for the plan to succeed, including existing U.S. sanctions on Cuba and suspicion — both in Miami and Havana.
For decades, Cuban leaders have viewed Cuban exiles with hostility. But in the past decade, several Cuban Americans who have advocated for more engagement with Cuba have been urging the Cuban government to normalize its relationship with Cubans living outside the island, including in the United States.
But Cuban leaders have resisted further economic engagement with the country’s own population living abroad because many are critical of the communist regime and would like to see a democratic transition.
Several activists and members of exile organizations in Miami have been stressing they would not accept anything short of a democratic transition in Cuba, worried that the Trump administration might be prioritizing economic reforms instead. An economic opening without political change is likely to face opposition from local Republican officials and members of Congress.
“There is NOTHING the regime has that the United States wants,” Miami U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, who is Cuban American, said on X Friday. “There will be ZERO investment from the US unless there is MAJOR political change on the island.”
On the Cuban side, after decades of demonizing exiles, it will be difficult for the government to pivot from its own narrative to allow Cubans abroad to return to the island as wealthy investors, while those who remained loyal to the communist system can barely survive. But under Díaz-Canel almost two million Cubans, mostly young and educated, have left the country in recent years, leaving little alternative to the government but to lean on the large Cuban diaspora for capital and expertise.
Still, any liberalization comes with many questions, especially regarding which guarantees the government would be willing to provide to assure investors. Those guarantees would require changes to Cuban law, and, ultimately, to the country’s constitution. And without them, several Cuban American businessmen have told the Herald the country is unlikely to receive major investments.
On Thursday, an article penned by Cuban-American businessman Hugo Cancio listed the sort of reforms the Cuban government could do to attract investments, including allowing Cubans abroad to own businesses, providing legal protection of private property, full opening of the real estate market and access to land as an economic and financial asset, among several other measures. Cancio owns an online business that delivers food in Cuba purchased abroad by family and friends.
It’s abundantly clear that Cubans and people of Cuban descent living outside the island have the skills and the business, political and technical expertise, not to mention the extensive financial means, to significantly lift Cuba’s fortunes, exiles and Cuban Americans say.
“Anything that Cuba does to move forward is going to require Cubans living abroad,” said Joe Garcia, a onetime Democratic congressman from Miami and a former official of the Cuban American National Foundation. “The reality is we have this incredible human capital – doctors, lawyers, engineers. They are enmeshed in business, politics, the arts.
“This might be it,” he said. “I think we have arrived.”
But for that to happen, negotiations between Cuba and the United States must first produce solid, reliable legal and political guarantees, Garcia and others say. And that has not been the case in past openings and limited reforms that seemed promising at first but were eventually shut down by the communist government, they note.
“The proof is in the pudding,” said Michael Bustamante, a history professor and chair of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. “As we speak, there’s no clear, straightforward framework for Cubans abroad to be legal and aboveboard foreign investors in Cuban private enterprises that are otherwise authorized. In fact, in the last couple of years, they made it more difficult for that to happen.
“Diaspora engagement is important. On the economic front, it’s absolutely necessary,” Bustamante added. “But Cuba also cannot bank on just counting on its diaspora as an economic partner without taking into consideration its political voice. There will be limited returns without both of those things over the long haul.”
Garcia said that doesn’t mean that Cuban expatriates should expect to impose “master plans from outside.” He notes that Cubans on the island have shown time and again they are more than capable of improving their lot – once they land in Miami or New York.
“If you can take all of Hialeah and put it in Cuba, Cuba would work,” he said.
Miami Herald staff writers Garrett Shanley and Claire Heddles contributed to this story.
el Nuevo Herald
Nora Gámez Torres is the Cuba/U.S.-Latin American policy reporter for el Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald. She studied journalism and media and communications in Havana and London. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from City, University of London. Her work has won awards by the Florida Society of News Editors and the Society for Professional Journalists.//Nora Gámez Torres estudió periodismo y comunicación en La Habana y Londres. Tiene un doctorado en sociología y desde el 2014 cubre temas cubanos para el Nuevo Herald y el Miami Herald. También reporta sobre la política de Estados Unidos hacia América Latina. Su trabajo ha sido reconocido con premios de Florida Society of News Editors y Society for Profesional Journalists.