Miami — The day in November 1960 is deeply rooted in Raúl Valdés Fuli’s family lore, when an agent of Fidel Castro’s revolution showed up at his family’s Pedroso bank in Havana, armed with a machine gun, and demanded they leave.
Calling his father and uncle “Gosanos” — or “worms,” a Spanish term coined by Castro to discredit those fleeing the island — the agent seized control of the bank and in an instant stripped a family who had arrived from Spain in the 16th century.
“They told them this is now the People’s Bank,” said Valdis Foley, a lawyer and former mayor of the Miami suburb of Coral Gables. “They couldn’t even take family photos from their office walls.”
Seven decades later, such traumatic events have urgently resurfaced, with President Donald Trump’s threats of military intervention, backed by a naval blockade of fuel shipments that brought residents to the island. The already weak economy is on its kneeshas Emerging negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Many Cuban Americans are convinced that 2026 could — finally — be the year of regime change on the communist-run island.
But this cautious optimism among the exiles is tempered by anxiety about the possibility of being dispensed with. The nightmare scenario they face: a repeat of what recently happened in Venezuela, where Trump ousted Nicolas Maduro and then joined his former allies in a partnership where Demands for democracy They take a back seat in oil industry deal-making.
“I hope he doesn’t do what he did in Venezuela, which is keep the thieves in power,” said Valdes Foli, who married a Venezuelan woman.
Among the emotional elements of the talks, and one of the most difficult to resolve, is the prospect of hundreds of thousands of legal claims by Cuban Americans whose homes, businesses and land were seized after Castro took power in 1959.
Nick Gutierrez’s house is filled with faded land titles, black-and-white photographs and obscure books including a tattered one – “Cuba Owners, 1958” – describing the 550 largest fortunes seized by the revolution.
As president of the National Association of Cuban Landowners in Exile, Gutierrez advises families of Cuban exiles on how to obtain reparations for forced collective labor. For decades that was a single task relegated to the legal sidelines, because there was absolutely no hope of getting Cuba to pay.
“A lot of it has fallen on deaf ears,” Gutierrez said.
But as speculation grows about possible regime change, real interest in the issue has exploded among those who previously viewed expensive lawsuits as a fool’s errand, as well as young Cuban-American businessmen eager to help rebuild a country they barely know but whose legacy they carry with pride.
“We are now talking about the existential issue of whether the Cuban dictatorship will last until next month,” said Gutierrez, whose parents fled the island two years before he was born.
Untangling property claims in Cuba is like fighting a multi-headed hydra, said Robert Meuse, a Washington lawyer who specializes in U.S. laws related to Cuba.
In the hierarchy of property losses, those with the strongest standing under U.S. law are 5,913 claims approved By the Department of Justice in 1972 for $1.9 billion. They include companies such as Exxon Mobil and Marriott International whose assets were seized as part of Castro’s nationalization drive of everything from oil refineries and the telephone system to hair salons and shoe shine kiosks.
Under US law those claims – Worth $10 billion today – It must be resolved in order to fully restore economic and diplomatic relations. But in practice, the executive is empowered to control private losses in exchange for a lump sum and to include the dispute in any settlement with Havana.
In a break from the past, Cuba has indicated its willingness to discuss the claims – as part of a broader conversation about its claim for damages resulting from the US trade embargo, which was imposed in 1962.
A thorny issue is Title III of the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. The law allows exiles to sue any company deemed to be “trading” in property confiscated by Cuba.
All previous US presidents have suspended Title III over the objections of US allies doing business in Cuba. Likewise, many exiles viewed the legislation as an empty threat because of the remote possibility of collecting money from a bankrupt government.
But Trump Upload comment in 2019, and about 50 lawsuits have been filed since then. The door may soon open to more claims, based on two cases that came before the US Supreme Court this year.
One of the cases, brought by Exxon, seeks $1 billion from Cuban state-owned entities. The other lawsuit was filed by Havana Docks, based in Delaware, against four cruise ships that paid the Cuban government to disembark nearly a million tourists at a port it once managed after President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations.
Moses likened the legal risks of doing business in Cuba to “stalactites” that have formed over several decades, deterring investment and political settlement.
“Hundreds of thousands of claimants cannot get compensation,” Musa said. “It’s impractical.”
However, Gutierrez said that if Havana’s stated goal of attracting foreign capital is sincere, it has incentives to make deals with Cuban Americans willing to invest in the country. Examples include former communist countries in Eastern Europe that compensated for their confiscations of property at the end of the Cold War, helping their economies move forward.
Trump may have the right mix of business sense, impatience with tradition and political freedom as a second-term president to work through the complex mess, Muse said. Muse added that a signal that he was unlikely to get involved in legal plea bargains was when he hosted oil company executives at the White House after Maduro’s ouster and told them they would have to write off any unpaid claims from asset seizures in Venezuela.
Gutierrez worries that Trump’s eagerness to win the award, which 12 Democratic and Republican presidents have been unable to win, may get the better of him. But he feels reassured by the president’s long-standing friendship with Cuban Americans, who are among his most ardent supporters.
“Trump has no moral qualms about dealing with bad guys,” Gutierrez said. He added: “But he knows how important this is to us, and this gives us some comfort because he will not abandon us.”