It’s hard to believe Cuba’s communist dictatorship has survived for 66 years. It’s even harder to believe after more than six decades of corruption, brutal oppression, and murder, there are Americans who continue to support and defend it.
An Op-Ed by Regis Iglesias and John Suarez in Diario Las Americas (my translation):
The Cuban Dictatorship turns 66
From the Eisenhower administration to these final days of Biden, with only a few exceptions, the United States has not known how to deal with that Caribbean gang disguised in ideological clothing.
The Cuban dictatorship has turned 66 years old—a number that is, in itself, obscene.
It’s striking how early on the U.S. attempted to whitewash the Castro criminals. Even while they were still hiding in the Cuban mountains or operating in the country’s major cities committing acts of terrorism—like the infamous night when Castro’s elements detonated a hundred bombs in Havana—they were being portrayed as a kind of Robin Hood gang stealing from the rich to benefit the poor.
The reality was that most of these leaders came from the upper echelons of society and the Cuban middle class. The Creole bourgeoisie financed every bomb detonated in cinemas, parks, shops, or cabarets under Castro’s orders and executed by his collaborators in the 26th of July Movement.
From the Eisenhower administration to these waning moments of Biden’s presidency, the United States has largely failed to handle this Caribbean mafia cloaked in ideological garb, with a few notable exceptions.
The Reagan administration had the most coherent and effective policy toward Cuba. It recognized the dictatorship for what it was and placed Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism after the State Department confirmed that Castro was using a narcotics network to funnel weapons and money to the M-19 terrorist group fighting to overthrow Colombian democracy.
Ronald Reagan’s White House sought critical dialogue with the dictatorship, but through initiatives like Radio Martí, it tried to speak directly to the Cuban people, giving dissidents access to media that reached the island.
Reagan’s State Department participated in a successful multilateral approach in the United Nations Human Rights Commission, resulting in Cuba being repeatedly condemned for systematic human rights violations and the appointment of a special rapporteur on Cuba—a position that focused on Cuba until 2006.
During the Reagan and George H.W. Bush years, Castro allowed the International Red Cross to visit Cuban prisons for the first time since 1959. During this period, Latin America experienced its longest and deepest wave of democratization in history. Despite the successes of this policy, normalization efforts resurfaced repeatedly from the 1990s onward, with disastrous results.
From the start, the gang led by the Castro brothers murdered, expropriated, imprisoned, and exiled not only Cubans but also U.S. citizens. From the beginning to this day, they have fostered international terrorism in this hemisphere and beyond. However, the worst toll has, of course, been borne by us—the Cuban people.
The Castros turned Cuba into a nuclear gun pointed at America’s heart and a hub for espionage bases operated by powers like Russia, China, and Iran, tracking every U.S. move of interest to its enemies. Links to drug cartels have been denounced and documented for decades without consequences for Cuba’s communist regime.
Even German filmmaker Wilfried Huismann revealed Fidel Castro and Cuban intelligence’s involvement in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in his documentary Rendezvous with Death, aired on German public television in 2006.
Despite this, Washington has mostly opted to negotiate with these tropical Capones to keep them from rigging the roulette wheel they always win on their home turf. Negotiating with those who refuse to do so—and pay no price for their misdeeds—is futile.
One faction of this mafia, Gaviota, serves as an international front to collect the nation’s revenues and enrich the island’s economic-military junta. It reportedly holds around $4.3 billion in its bank accounts—nearly 13 times the $339 million the regime claims it needs annually to purchase medicines and supply Cuban pharmacies. Meanwhile, the healthcare system lacks 70% of the essential medications to treat most illnesses, which the regime blames on the U.S. embargo.
This demonstrates that unilateral measures are not necessarily effective. In Cuba, those in power grow richer while the Cuban people grow poorer and remain oppressed.
That’s why it’s time to “South Africanize” the Cuban issue—apply an international boycott against the segregationist communist party regime and its economic-military junta that denies the people freedom and development. This boycott should aim to isolate and suffocate a caste that keeps its hands on our necks while the free world fills their pockets.
Cubans are fed up with fraudulent reforms—changes without rights—and the infiltration of interests that mock democracy and sovereignty. Cubans deserve rights. The time is now.
This is the civic, non-violent change we advocate and demand: changes that mean freedom, reconciliation, political pluralism, and free elections. This is our fight, and it’s time for the supposed friends of freedom in the free world—those who still prefer to do business with tyranny and turn a blind eye—to decide where they stand.
The “Robin Hood” celebrated by many major U.S. and global media outlets turned out to be a bandit akin to Abshir Abdullahi Abdulle. His party and army were more akin to the “Boyah gang,” though far more successful.
But they were not just bandits—they were murderers of their own people, ideologically inspiring regimes like the Assad dynasty in Syria, which has also been legitimized by the West. Now, as regime change unfolds there, mass graves with hundreds of thousands of victims have been uncovered across the country.
Let 2025 be the year of solidarity and freedom for the Cuban people.
By Regis Iglesias and John Suarez
Regis Iglesias Ramírez is the spokesperson for the Christian Liberation Movement.
John J. Suarez is the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba. Suarez was a program officer for the Latin American Department at Freedom House.