![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/2026-09-23T202113Z_90118347_RC24PNAHV9YS_RTRMADP_3_CUBA-DAILYLIFE.JPG\" "\\"A")
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A horse-drawn carriage travels past Cuba\u2019s National Capitol building in Havana, on Sept. 3, 2026.<\/p>\n
Ricardo Arduengo<\/p>\n
REUTERS<\/p>\n
As President Donald Trump mused about \u201ctaking Cuba\u201d earlier this year, the question that has hovered over the exile community for decades \u2014 what happens the day after Cuba\u2019s communist regime falls \u2014 suddenly gained urgency, sparking an intense planning effort in Miami for a future transition whose contours are still unclear.<\/p>\n
Prominent Cuban Americans and opposition organizations have rushed to offer their own vision for a post-communist Cuba, producing a \u201cfreedom accord<\/a>,\u201d a \u201cfundamental law<\/a>,\u201d a playbook for \u201cDay zero,\u201d and an economic stabilization program<\/a>. Wealthy Cuban American families have gathered in a new chamber of commerce, ready to invest when democracy comes to the island.<\/p>\n As they plot plans for the future, they have stumbled upon challenges similar to those that underpinned post-communist transitions in Eastern Europe near the end of the 20th Century, from how to pay to rebuild a country whose power plants, hospitals and roads are in ruins to what to do with the Communist Party.<\/p>\n The planning boom is a product of events in 2026: U.S. special forces captured Venezuelan strongman Nicol\u00e1s Maduro on Jan. 3. The Trump administration then cut off the oil that kept Cuba\u2019s lights on. It also opened back-channel conversations with Ra\u00fal Castro\u2019s grandson. Trump told reporters in March he expected to have the honor of \u201ctaking Cuba in some form.\u201d<\/p>\n That talk has faded, but Cuba\u2019s collapsed economy and humanitarian crisis, paired with foreseeable leadership changes in the near future \u2014 the country\u2019s ideological leader, Ra\u00fal Castro, is 95, after all \u2014 demand urgent action, the people involved in the planning have said.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody knows the how, the manner or the outcome,\u201d Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation and an owner of the InterMiami soccer club, told the Miami Herald. The foundation released one of the most ambitious Cuba plans this spring. Like most, it is written for the moment after regime change arrives.<\/p>\n It calls for \u201ca free-market democracy grounded in private initiative,\u201d a constitutional republic with an independent judiciary, and a government that is \u201climited, transparent, and focused on creating the conditions for growth \u2014 not on directing growth.\u201d<\/p>\n Mas said he came out of meetings with Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year \u201cconvinced that we are going to see a change in Cuba,\u201d which is why, he added, \u201cthose of us who are abroad need to show Cubans on the island that there is a path for change and they don\u2019t have to fear it.\u201d<\/p>\n The cost of reconstruction<\/p>\n Mas put Cuba\u2019s reconstruction capital needs at between $40 billion and $90 billion \u2014 and said raising that kind of money is \u201czero problem.<\/p>\n \u201cThis equation is not going to fail for lack of capital,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is needed is a legal framework, a framework of protection and investment incentives.\u201d<\/p>\n He said his family\u2019s assets are available to invest in a free Cuba. He predicted rapid results: a first-world electrical grid \u201cin the first year\u201d and full employment within six months to a year. \u201cWe cannot be talking here about a transition of four, five, six, seven, eight years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Rafael Romeu, CEO of Washington-based DevTech Systems and president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, estimated a much higher reconstruction cost of $275 billion to $375 billion over 10 to 15 years. The money, he said, would primarily come from the Cubans abroad, which he called \u201cCuba\u2019s oil\u201d and \u201cthe only resource large enough to rebuild\u201d the island.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not aid,\u201d he said at an event organized by the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in July, where he presented his \u201cCuba Day Zero\u201d roadmap. \u201cIt\u2019s a national rebuild of Cuba\u2019s entire economy, funded by private capital, not taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n A major roadblock is that Cuba cannot count on the funding that rebuilt Eastern Europe. Post-communist economies received $165 billion in multilateral support between 1990-95. But Cuba does not belong to the institutions that provided it, such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. U.S. law \u2013 the 1996 Helms-Burton Act \u2013 requires the U.S. government to oppose Cuba\u2019s admission to such financial institutions until the president formally notifies Congress \u201cthat a democratically elected government in Cuba is in power\u201d in Havana.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no multilateral safety net on day one,\u201d Romeu said. \u201cAnd USAID-led nation-building like in Iraq or Afghanistan is no longer U.S. policy,\u201d he said, referring to the foreign aid agency dismantled by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n Still, Helms-Burton authorizes humanitarian aid and assistance to a transition government to meet the population\u2019s \u201cemergency\u201d needs. Romeu estimates Cuba needs $180 million to $270 million in U.S. aid to stabilize the country in the first six months, pay civil servants, police and doctors, and keep \u201clights on and people fed.\u201d<\/p>\n A newly created Cuban American National Chamber of Commerce said its members want to see full legal guarantees and a democratic government before making any investments.<\/p>\n The chamber\u2019s members say the money is there. Juan Omar Sixto told the Herald that if the group reaches its goal of 100 wealthy Cuban-American families, their combined net worth would be around $200 billion. At the group\u2019s first gathering in March in Miami, he said Cuban Americans in exile are willing to move capital to Cuba, but only when change comes.<\/p>\n Communists at the transition table<\/p>\n At a congressional hearing in June, Miami U.S. Rep. Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar asked Rubio whether Washington could find \u201canother Delcy\u201d in Cuba \u2014 a reference to Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, the Venezuelan former vice president who now leads the country as interim president. Rubio said the administration has not found \u201ca singular individual right now that we would trust and rely on to lead this transition from start to finish.\u201d He then cited the post-communist transitions in Poland and the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things they did is they did preserve certain institutions in their society in order to provide stability and longevity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A proposed transition law drafted by the Cuban American Bar Association follows a similar premise. It allows public employees and government officials to keep their jobs if they were not \u201csignificantly involved\u201d in human rights violations and swear loyalty to the new order. Military officers could remain in service under similar conditions.<\/p>\n The proposed law creates a 15-member \u201cPro-Unity National Council\u201d that would appoint an interim president and cabinet. Its members would be drawn proportionally from \u201cthe dissidents, exiles, and Cuban citizens as a whole, including members of the previous regime.\u201d<\/p>\n The question of whether people from the current system should help lead the transition elicits strong emotions among Cuban exiles. News reports that the Trump administration had contacted Ra\u00fal Castro\u2019s grandson were met with disbelief and rejection among many exiles in South Florida.<\/p>\n \u201cThe incompetents need to get out of the way \u2014 the Castro family, the bureaucratic apparatus inside Cuba,\u201d Mas said. \u201cThose have to be eliminated… because they are all an obstacle to progress.\u201d<\/p>\n Human rights activist Rosa Mar\u00eda Pay\u00e1, whose group Pasos de Cambio is one of the signatories of the Freedom Accord<\/a>, a transition plan that brings together several opposition organizations of Cuban exiles and dissidents on the island, said Havana\u2019s current leadership would have to leave on day one. However, those leading the transition efforts would need to work with the government bureaucracy at the beginning, she concedes.<\/p>\n The accord\u2019s signatories have already established working commissions that Pay\u00e1 said \u201cwill be the leadership of the departments or ministries during a provisional period.\u201d<\/p>\n Pay\u00e1, who also serves on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, also opposes the administration\u2019s efforts to work through a figure in the current government, rejecting the widely shared view that no organized opposition movement exists in the country.<\/p>\n \u201cToday the opposition, the Cuban civic organizations, are ready to lead this process,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n A Cuba Working Group at Harvard University, mostly made up of Cuban and Cuban American academics and activists, including two from Miami and three from the island, takes a different approach: Its members want Cuban authorities to \u201ctake the initiative in this process and become facilitators,\u201d their report says<\/a>. It acknowledges that \u201cthis is not a premise shared by all political actors in Cuba and the diaspora.\u201d<\/p>\n The report provides a searing assessment of the government led by Cuba\u2019s appointed leader, Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel, and its role in precipitating a humanitarian crisis on the island. It also blames the Trump administration for aggravating it with sanctions. But it argues that the situation is so bad that the Cuban government \u201cmust\u201d facilitate a peaceful transition, beginning with a full amnesty for all political prisoners and the elimination of laws and decrees criminalizing dissent.<\/p>\n The report drew quick pushback. An editorial piece in Cuban independent news outlet 14ymedio<\/a> argued that Harvard\u2019s proposal risks preserving \u201cthe power of the leadership responsible for the national tragedy under a new institutional guise.\u201d Right-wing commentator Ninoska Perez-Castell\u00f3n made a similar point<\/a> in the Miami-based newspaper Diario las Am\u00e9ricas, also questioning the report\u2019s call for Cuban Americans to lobby the administration to end the Helms-Burton law.<\/p>\n Alejandro de la Fuente, a Latin American history professor at Harvard University and founding director of its Afro-Latin American Research Institute, originally convened the Cuba Working Group and said he understands why many Cubans, both in the U.S. and on the island, reject the idea that the current leadership should have a role in a transition.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a bad point, it\u2019s a good point, but we have to get this going first. How do we get this going without an invasion?\u201d he told the Herald.<\/p>\n \u201cNowhere do we say that the Cuban government will handle the transition,\u201d he added. \u201cWe say that the Cuban government should facilitate this process because it is operating in a context where it already has very little room to maneuver. We are advocating a dose of realism by telling the Cuban authorities to take the initiative before it is too late and facilitate this process\u2014without assuming they will guide it all the way.\u201d<\/p>\n Critics doubt that the Cuban government would act on the proposal.<\/p>\n After all, the Trump administration has already pressed for the release of political prisoners and changes in the country, which the Cuban leadership has repeatedly rejected, even as living conditions worsen by the day on the island.<\/p>\n De la Fuente insists it is important to stress that such demands primarily come from Cubans themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are voicing a demand made by the Cuban people,\u201d he said. \u201cReleasing these prisoners is not an American issue, and the Cuban government should not treat it as a matter of American pressure. We are trying to detach this agenda\u2014to shift it away from the realm of U.S. foreign policy. It shouldn\u2019t be a concession to the United States; it shouldn\u2019t be a concession at all\u2014it should be an act of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n The Cuban government, predictably, did not take the report\u2019s suggestions kindly. Instead, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodr\u00edguez attacked it on X, accusing the report of being \u201cpseudoscientific… psychological warfare against our people\u201d and its authors of aligning with propaganda designed by the State Department.<\/p>\n Speaking to reporters on Wednesday in New York, Rubio voiced a proposal very similar to what the Harvard working group is advocating for and again suggested the administration would prefer a negotiated transition in Cuba.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, there are some individuals in that regime with whom we can never work because their hands are stained in blood, but there are people there that I believe that you can work with, if they are willing to put the country on a path towards political and economic freedom,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Old debates<\/p>\n The debate echoes criticism once aimed at Oswaldo Pay\u00e1, the Catholic dissident and Rosa Maria Pay\u00e1\u2019s father, who spent two decades drafting transition plans from his Havana home. His 1992 transition program proposed a National Council of the Transitional Government with an equal number of Communist Party members and opposition representatives.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Cuban Communist Party will not be banned,\u201d the program says. In Pay\u00e1\u2019s plan, party cadres would continue their duties, just like ministers and state employees, who would answer to transition commissions. The Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Interior Ministry would cease as institutions, but their units would keep their chain of command under civilian authority.<\/p>\n Pay\u00e1 presented the inclusion as much a matter of reconciliation as order. He began thinking seriously about a transition in 1989, after the Tiananmen Square massacre in China, \u201cterribly worried the same thing could happen in Cuba,\u201d said David E. Hoffman, a former Washington Post columnist who wrote a biography of Pay\u00e1.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of it is controversial right now,\u201d and has no clear answer, Hoffman said. \u201cA cleansing of all the old regime\u2019s people would have been a calamity. If you get rid of everybody in the state, you\u2019re going to have a lot of difficulty. But if you include them, then you have to reconcile with them, and these things are very incompatible.\u201d<\/p>\n A Miami vision?<\/p>\n When talking about Cuba, Trump usually mentions his Cuban American friends, the millionaires and billionaires who would gladly return to Cuba to rebuild it.<\/p>\n The Cuban American National Foundation\u2019s roadmap says Cuban Americans \u201chave amassed extensive amounts of capital\u201d and \u201care eager to partner with Cubans living in Cuba.\u201d The Harvard group calls Cuba \u201ca transnational nation.\u201d<\/p>\n But the sheer volume of planning in Miami has also raised questions about power and the role Cubans on the island will play in a transition.<\/p>\n Three million Cubans emigrated between 2013-24, the Harvard report says, citing a loss of close to 30% of the population. Many of the dissidents who once did this kind of work inside Cuba are now in exile or in prison.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t see anybody presently working at this level on this kind of detail on the island,\u201d Hoffman said. \u201cThere\u2019s still some opposition, but the kind of thing Oswaldo was doing doesn\u2019t seem to exist anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Pay\u00e1, he added, \u201cleft us with this idea that it has to come from within. And yet, Cuba is sort of empty. Is his idea out of date? Maybe it is.\u201d<\/p>\n Survey data suggests many people on the island welcome exile involvement. In a poll by El Toque, an independent digital media platform run by Cuban journalists in exile, 54% of respondents inside Cuba said exiles should take part in a transitional government on equal terms. Another 25% would give them a leading role, and only 6% would exclude them entirely.<\/p>\n Rosa Mar\u00eda Pay\u00e1 said the Freedom Accord is built precisely to protect Cubans on the island, answering government propaganda that \u201cthe people from Miami\u201d will come to take over.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is precisely to look after the interests of those who have historically been at a disadvantage. And that is us, the Cubans, and above all the Cubans who are inside Cuba,\u201d she said. \u201cIt includes provisions such as no one will be removed from their home. This is a problem for Cubans. We Cubans have to solve it, and we are doing it as best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n But experts warn that the plans written in Miami and elsewhere will likely face pushback inside the island.<\/p>\n Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that on the island, \u201cany plan for transition\u201d is likely to be viewed by many as \u201ca threat to whatever small livelihood they\u2019re hanging on to.<\/p>\n \u201cTransitions are often made of compromise of many kinds, and those compromises are often imperfect,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cUnless we\u2019re grappling with what you\u2019re actually willing to put on the table, it all just seems sort of like an exercise in the abstract.\u201d<\/p>\n Hoffman, who has studied the collapse of the Soviet Union, warned about expectations. Transitions \u201chave basically never followed the plan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In Russia, people\u2019s expectations were far higher than the transition could deliver, and after a decade they gave up, he said. Cuba\u2019s starting point, he added, is not 1992, when Pay\u00e1 wrote his plan. Since then, talent has drained away, the military controls much of the economy, and the Castro family remains a dynasty.<\/p>\n \u201cTransition is not just a bunch of think tanks and political activists,\u201d Hoffman said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very real thing for people every day of their lives, and oftentimes extremely messy.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published September 25, 2026 at 3:48 PM.<\/p>\n![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MIA_105CubaInfraestruct22NEWPPP.JPG\" "\\"MIA_105CubaInfraestruct22NEWPPP.JPG\\"")
Dr. Rafael Romeu, president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, was among a group of experts who spoke at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, during a forum titled \u201cRebuilding Cuba’s infrastructure as part of the transition to Democracy\u201d, on July 22, 2026. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com <\/p>\n![\"Human-rights](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/MIA_CUBA_ROUNDTABLE_LW07.jpeg\" "\\"MIA_CUBA_ROUNDTABLE_LW07\\"")
Human-rights advocate Rosa Mar\u00eda Pay\u00e1 speaks during a roundtable discussion between elected officials and Cuban activists about political prisoners, at the Brigade 2506 Museum on July 10, 2023. Lauren Witte lwitte@miamiherald.com <\/p>\n![\"Alejandro](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/download.jpg\" "\\"download.jpg\\"")
Alejandro de la Fuente is the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, a professor of African and African American Studies and of History, and faculty chair of the Cuba Studies Program at Harvard University. <\/p>\n The late dissident Oswaldo Pay\u00e1 at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity in Miami. Pedro Portal EL Nuevo Herald <\/p>\n
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