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00:00This is a story about hope triumphing over experience.
00:04Once again, the Cuban economy appears to be on the brink of collapse
00:07in the face of tightening U.S. economic sanctions,
00:10this time without the potential for help from the Soviet Union or Venezuela.
00:20We're not investing in Cuba. It would be a loss.
00:23No, if you live in Cuba, it must be that the system of Cuba is closed,
00:26and there is a democracy. It's the only way to live in Cuba.
00:29Cuando se cae el comunismo, volverÃa a Cuba.
00:32The section of Miami known as Little Havana
00:35is home to over half of Cuban-Americans
00:37whose families fled the Castro Revolution nearly 70 years ago.
00:41And even as Havana, 200 miles to their south, struggles,
00:46many remain hopeful that things can and must change.
00:50Cuba's in a lot of trouble because, unfortunately for them,
00:53it's run by a bunch of incompetent communists.
00:56Being communist is bad.
00:57Not being an incompetent communist is, like, the worst.
01:02Before the revolution in 1959, Cuba had the third largest GDP per capita in Latin America.
01:09Today, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean estimates
01:13that the country has the lowest nominal GDP per capita in the region.
01:17Because of the U.S. sanctions, they've just been starved of finance for so long.
01:21I think every sector, pretty much every sector, is open to investment.
01:27Emily Morris is a research fellow at University College London.
01:30There's a lot of uncertainty about Cuba right now.
01:34I won't ask you to predict what will happen,
01:36but give me a range of scenarios that might happen.
01:39Okay, well, the first scenario is, I suppose, the intended scenario for the actions that have been taken by the
01:47U.S.
01:47You create such a lot of hardship that somehow the population turns against their government
01:52or the government is forced to resign.
01:54And then you have a change of regime and you have a new political system
01:57and then you have the restoration of capitalism.
02:00The second scenario is that the U.S. continues to create more and more hardship
02:06and the situation just gets worse and worse in Cuba.
02:10The third scenario is if you went in and took out either the president or Raul Castro, who's 95,
02:17and then somebody else would step in.
02:19And then the fourth scenario is what they refer to as greater military action,
02:26which would be to ramp up the pressure by using U.S. military to damage infrastructure and all the rest
02:35of it.
02:35Again, unlikely to achieve the objectives.
02:41Some who hope for change in the Cuban economy point to President Diaz-Canel's proposed reforms.
02:46Para las formas de gestión no estatal, se van a limitar las actividades prohibidas.
02:51Hay también un grupo de disposiciones para incentivar la inversión extranjera directa.
02:59Tiene que ver con derechos de superficie, quitar trabas.
03:04Tiene que ver también con el uso de las cuentas bancarias, con los plazos de aprobación de la inversión extranjera
03:12directa.
03:14In June, Cuban lawmakers passed 176 sweeping free market reforms,
03:19including the expansion of foreign and private investment,
03:23the decentralization of Cuba's economy,
03:25and liberalization of factors such as tourism, banking, property, and agriculture.
03:31We've had this statement by the Cubans, which is an interesting one,
03:36and I think we should take it seriously.
03:39But this is an acceleration, it's much more explicit,
03:43and it's an invitation to Cuban Americans to invest in Cuba.
03:47It includes privatizations, a wider opening to foreign investment,
03:51and the actual withdrawal of the government from central planning system.
03:57En esta coyuntura tan complicada de 2026,
04:01pues parece que ese balance ha favorecido a aquellos que se inclinan por reformas de mercado,
04:09pero tienen un problema de credibilidad.
04:11Pavel Vidal is a professor at Pontificia Universidad Javariana in Cali, Colombia.
04:18He is Cuban born and worked at Cuba's central bank
04:22and the center for the study of the Cuban economy until he left the country in 2012.
04:26We have to see how they advance in these reforms
04:31to show effectively that these are not transitory reforms,
04:37that they are not simple makeup or announcements,
04:40but that they have a disposition to change the property structure,
04:45the economy mechanisms of functioning,
04:47and that the state will be removed from the economy
04:52and it will give more space to the national capitales and international capitales.
04:59But where some see the promise of the announced reforms, others are deeply skeptical.
05:09Particularly some Cuban American investors eager to return to investing in their home country.
05:14They are afraid as a communist dictatorship of the entrepreneurial class having actually freedom
05:20and actually having essentially an opposition that can challenge their government.
05:25Andro Nadarci Leon is a Cuban American hotelier
05:28whose Lion Grove has substantial real estate investments in the United States.
05:32They're never going to allow for any meaningful amount of private market activity.
05:37They're completely lying, you know, and it's a farce.
05:41This, you know, these steps that they're taking with these supposed reforms.
05:44They're doing it to buy time.
05:46They're doing it because they're trying to run out the clock on the Trump administration
05:50and the efforts of President Trump and Secretary Marco Rubio.
05:53That's what they're playing for.
05:55The Cuban people know it.
05:55We just want them to be a nicely run country.
06:00We're going to let our people go back and let them invest in Cuba if they'd like.
06:06Essential to President Trump's plans to open Cuba up to U.S. investment
06:10are the heavy sanctions he has imposed.
06:13Sanctions that have hit the Cuban economy hard,
06:16including one of the most promising sectors, tourism.
06:19Since May, hotel groups including Melia, Iberostar, Blue Diamond,
06:24and Archipelago International have either pulled the plug or curtailed operations.
06:29And the number of visits last year were down 62% from the country's peak in 2018,
06:35the lowest in 20 years other than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
06:40The offering of services in Cuba is obviously significantly limited by how,
06:44you know, broken that economy is.
06:46And so for many years now, the tourism market in Cuba,
06:50you know, it was not a market that had, you know, five-star, you know, properties.
06:54I mean, upper upscale luxury was not really something that you saw in a significant way in Cuba.
06:59It was a lower rated market.
07:03The good thing is that there is a significant amount of existing properties there,
07:07existing assets, and existing infrastructure within the tourism industry.
07:11I think it requires firms like ours going and acquiring those properties,
07:16reinvesting and reimagining and upgrading those properties,
07:18and also bringing the operating conditions of those properties to a world-class scale.
07:24And so that's the lens through which we're looking at investing in Cuba.
07:28Surely there will also be the development of brand new resorts.
07:32I think there will be an opportunity for the development of branded residential product, right,
07:36which often is joined together with resorts or other types of hospitality properties.
07:41And so we think the future is very bright in that sector, without a doubt,
07:46and it's a very important pillar of the economic recovery of the island.
07:50Tourism parece ser un sector, al menos en un inicio, que puede generar oportunidades,
07:59sobre todo si hay una flexibilización a las restricciones de viaje de los ciudadanos estadounidenses,
08:07que podrÃa ser el mercado natural, a partir del cual se genere un boom del arribo de visitantes,
08:16como sucedió, por ejemplo, con las flexibilizaciones que se introdujeron en las sanciones y en los viajes durante la administración
08:25Obama.
08:26Vidal says at this point, the Cuban government isn't looking to places like Mexico or Chile to inform its economic
08:32policies.
08:33It most often cites Vietnam or even China.
08:37As Cuba seeks to rebuild its economy, are there lessons it can learn from other Latin American countries?
08:44SÃ, bueno, normalmente las referencias que prefiere el gobierno cubano son las referencias a Vietnam y China,
08:55sobre todo porque ellos están haciendo cambios económicos y por ahora no han mencionado cambios polÃticos.
09:01Entonces ese modelo de transformación donde se dan los cambios económicos sin cambios polÃticos, pues es su preferencia.
09:09No digo que ese sea el modelo que vaya a sobrevivir.
09:13Hay factores que pondrÃan obstáculos a esa posibilidad de manejar una reforma al estilo vietnamita y chino sin cambios polÃticos.
09:29Entonces yo creo que esa influencia de América Latina, de instituciones democráticas, de un estado de derecho,
09:35son lecciones que en algún momento tienen que llegar a Cuba.
09:40Cuba es muy cerca de Vietnam, han tenido expertos que vengan, dicen que están estudiando o que están siguiendo el
09:47modelo vietnamita,
09:48pero adaptándolo a la realidad cubana y demás.
09:51Están buscando un modelo vietnamita, un tipo de economÃa muy diferente.
09:55El modelo vietnamita, o economÃa en el momento del principio del transición, era muy rural.
10:01Cuba es una sociedad muy urbana, es una sociedad muy externa dependiente.
10:08Entonces, la condiciones son diferentes, pero la idea de seguir un camino de transición hacia una economÃa
10:15es claramente y explÃcitamente establecido ahora por el gobierno de Cuba.
10:19Pero algunos de los que saben lo mejor dicen que para real reformas económicas,
10:24Cuba va a necesitar a cambiar su propio sistema polÃtico, away from state control.
10:28No está claro cuál es el modelo que quiere seguir esta transformación que se plantea para Cuba.
10:33De hecho, ese es un problema, ¿no? Que se anuncian reformas, pero no está claro hacia dónde vamos.
10:41Y ellos quieren mantener un peso importante de la empresa estatal, ¿no?
10:47Un peso importante del Estado interviniendo en la economÃa, ¿no?
10:52Que serÃa más un modelo de tipo escandinavo, donde se amplÃan las reformas de mercado,
11:00pero se mantiene una intervención importante del Estado regulando todos los procesos económicos,
11:07donde, bueno, pues ahà habrÃa un distanciamiento de América Latina.
11:12Para cuban-americanos, ha sido un gran wait a ver condiciones en el grado
11:16change enough to bring them back.
11:18Hay que haber esperado por unos 70 años, y, at least so far,
11:23el experiencia no ha risen to the level of those hopes.
11:26Pero no hay que quitarle el apetite de return.
11:29Me, yo creo que toda la cuban-exile comunidad ha estado dreaming de este dÃa,
11:35para poder apoyar nuestros hermanos y hermanas y ver que nuestro paÃs se reconstruye,
11:40y ver que nuestro paÃs se convirtió en un becón de libertad,
11:43un becón de prosperidad, un becón de prosperidad y esperanza para toda la región.
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