By JOSHUA GOODMAN<\/p>\n
MIAMI (AP) \u2014 Deeply ingrained in Raul Valdes-Fauli\u2019s family lore is the November 1960 day when an agent of Fidel Castro\u2019s revolution showed up at his family\u2019s Pedroso Bank in Havana, with a machine gun, and demanded they leave.<\/p>\n
Calling his father and uncle gusanos \u2014 or worms, a Spanish-language term coined by Castro to denigrate those fleeing the island \u2014 the agent seized the bank and in an instant dispossessed a family that arrived from Spain in the 16th century.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey told them this was now the people\u2019s bank,\u201d said Valdes-Fauli, an attorney and former mayor of the Miami suburb of Coral Gables. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t even take family pictures off the walls of their office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seven decades later such traumatic episodes are resurfacing with urgency, as President Donald Trump\u2019s threats of military intervention, backed by a naval blockade of fuel shipments that has brought the island\u2019s already-anemic economy to its knees<\/a>, have spawned negotiations<\/a> between Washington and Havana. Many Cuban Americans are convinced that 2026 could \u2014 finally \u2014 be the year of regime change on the communist-run island.<\/p>\n But that cautious optimism among exiles is tempered by concern they could be cut out. Their nightmare scenario: a repeat of what happened recently in Venezuela, where Trump ousted Nicol\u00e1s Maduro only to join forces with his former allies in a partnership where demands for democracy<\/a> are taking a back seat to oil industry dealmaking.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that he doesn\u2019t do what he did in Venezuela, which is keep the thieves in power,\u201d said Valdes-Fauli, who married a Venezuelan.<\/p>\n An emotional element of the talks, and one of the toughest to resolve, is the potential for hundreds of thousands of legal claims by Cuban Americans whose homes, businesses and land were seized after Castro took power in 1959.<\/p>\n New hope for getting compensation<\/p>\n Nick Guti\u00e9rrez\u2019s home is full of fading land titles, black-and-white photographs and obscure books including one torn-apart tome \u2014 \u201cThe Owners of Cuba, 1958\u201d \u2014 that describes the 550 biggest fortunes taken over by the revolution.<\/p>\n As president of the National Association of Cuban Landowners in Exile, Guti\u00e9rrez advises Cuban exile families on how to seek compensation for the forced collectivism. For decades that was a lonely mission relegated to the legal fringes, because there was never any hope of getting Cuba to pay.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of it just fell on deaf ears,\u201d Guti\u00e9rrez said.<\/p>\n But with rising speculation about possible regime change, real interest in the issue has exploded among those who previously saw costly litigation as a fool\u2019s errand, as well as younger Cuban American entrepreneurs eager to help rebuild a country they barely know but whose heritage they proudly carry.<\/p>\n \u201cNow we\u2019re talking about the existential issue of whether the Cuban dictatorship will survive until next month,\u201d said Guti\u00e9rrez, whose parents fled the island two years before he was born.<\/p>\n Resolving the claims<\/p>\n Untangling property claims in Cuba is akin to battling a multiheaded hydra, said Robert Muse, a Washington attorney who specializes in U.S. laws relating to Cuba.<\/p>\n In the hierarchy of property losses, those with the strongest standing under U.S. law are the 5,913 claims certified<\/a> by the Justice Department in 1972 for $1.9 billion. They include corporations like ExxonMobil and Marriott International whose assets were seized as part of Castro\u2019s nationalization drive of everything from oil refineries and the telephone system to hair salons and shoeshine stands.<\/p>\n