Business

Cuba’s Private Businesses Are Being Called to Heel

Miguel Díaz-Canel’s meeting with private entrepreneurs offered recognition wrapped in warning. Cuba needs its small businesses to keep the country moving, but still insists on holding the leash.

Natalia Suyos · Aug 27, 2026

Cuba Will Remain Under a 1917 U.S. War Law

Washington has renewed the wartime legal authority behind Cuba’s long-running financial restrictions through September 2027. The paperwork is routine; the historical trap it preserves is not.

Natalia Suyos · Aug 26, 2026

Cuba Opens Its Schools Without the Means to Keep Them Open

Cuba will reopen schools on September 1, but the new academic year is being built around fuel shortages, failing transport, unstable power, and local improvisation. The country’s old promise of education is now being administered in pencil.

Natalia Suyos · Aug 25, 2026

Cuba’s Dialogue Has No Agenda

Natalia Suyos · Aug 24, 2026

Cuba’s Economy Is the Region’s Deepest Decline

Natalia Suyos · Aug 23, 2026

Cuba’s Water Tanks Are Now Part of the War Plan

Natalia Suyos · Aug 22, 2026

Cuba’s Pressure Valve Is Closed

Washington’s Cuba strategy is acquiring a clearer deadline: sustain the squeeze through January 2029 and wait for the system to yield. But closing every escape valve may punish a dictatorship without creating the institutions that can replace it.

Natalia Suyos · Aug 18, 2026

Cuba’s Centenary Wall

On Fidel Castro’s 100th birthday, Havana’s murals reveal the political work the dead commander is still made to do. The wall remains illuminated while the country beneath it argues, trades and waits.

Natalia Suyos · Aug 13, 2026

Cuba’s Fuel Has a Miami Address

New U.S. trade data show nearly $96 million in fuel and oil exports to Cuba in the first half of 2026. The deeper irony is not that Cuba trades with America, but that emergency fuel now arrives without the architecture of normal economic life.

Natalia Suyos · Aug 12, 2026

Cuba’s Private Economy Still Has a Gatekeeper

Cuba has loosened restrictions on private businesses, but the new rules still leave economic life dependent on the state’s permission. A gate is not a market, and a revocable opening is not autonomy.

Natalia Suyos · Aug 11, 2026

Cuba’s Military Representative in Beijing

Natalia Suyos · Aug 9, 2026

Cuba’s CIA Task Force Is a Carbon Copy

Natalia Suyos · Aug 7, 2026

Cuba’s August Paycheck Arrives Too Late

Natalia Suyos · Aug 3, 2026

Cuba Cannot Rebuild Under the Same Rules

Natalia Suyos · Aug 2, 2026

Cuba’s Digital Payment System Starts Today

Natalia Suyos · Aug 1, 2026

Cuba Opens the Pharmacy Door to Private Sellers

Natalia Suyos · Jul 30, 2026

The Fund on Cuba’s Sanctions List

Natalia Suyos · Jul 29, 2026

Meliá Has Returned the Keys in Cuba

Natalia Suyos · Jul 28, 2026

The Embassy Utility Bill in Havana

A new Treasury license lets third-country embassies in Havana pay for the practical necessities of diplomacy through a sanctioned state. The small exemption reveals how thoroughly Cuba’s regime has made itself the gatekeeper of ordinary life.

Natalia Suyos · Jul 26, 2026

The Cuban Medical Missions Ledger

Natalia Suyos · Jul 25, 2026

The Itinerary for a United Nations Expert in Havana

Natalia Suyos · Jul 23, 2026

The Battery at Villa Victoria

Natalia Suyos · Jul 20, 2026

The Four Chairs in Havana

Natalia Suyos · Jul 17, 2026

The Visitor Book in Havana

Natalia Suyos · Jul 15, 2026

Cuba’s Tourism Ministry Is on the Sanctions List

Natalia Suyos · Jul 14, 2026

The Podium That Used to Be a Sure Thing

Natalia Suyos · Jul 9, 2026

The Open Door into the Lawsuit

Natalia Suyos · Jul 8, 2026

The Dark Room Cuba Pleaded From

On the day Cuba's foreign minister stood at the United Nations rostrum demanding the world condemn Washington's fuel blockade, the island's power grid collapsed for the third time this year. The podium was lit. Havana was not.

Natalia Suyos · Jul 7, 2026

The Cable That Couldn't Stay Quiet

Natalia Suyos · Jul 6, 2026

The Telegram That Refilled the Tank

Natalia Suyos · Jul 5, 2026

The Gag Order That Proved the Case

A leaked State Department cable reveals that Washington is pressuring UN member states to block a July 7 debate on its Cuba blockade — and in doing so, has written the most damning confession of its own policy yet. Three days before the vote, the gag order is the argument.

Natalia Suyos · Jul 4, 2026

The Vote That Changes Nothing

Cuba has called an emergency UN General Assembly session for July 7 to protest Washington's oil blockade — summoning the world to a room where the world has already voted, 187 to 2, thirty-three times, to no effect. The most attended vote in international diplomacy is also the most ignored.

Natalia Suyos · Jul 3, 2026

The Colt That Broke the Fence

Natalia Suyos · Jul 2, 2026

The Door That No One Could Unlock

The Supreme Court ruled on June 23 that Helms-Burton strips sovereign immunity from Cuban state companies — the same day Washington designated five more regime entities under EO 14404. One ruling, one date, and the architecture of pressure around Cuba's state enterprise system suddenly has a legal foundation it never had before.

Natalia Suyos · Jun 30, 2026

The Refinery That Finally Has to Answer

The Supreme Court ruled on June 23 that the Helms-Burton Act strips Cuban state companies of sovereign immunity, clearing the way for ExxonMobil and other claimants to pursue decades-old confiscation cases in American courts — and erasing the last procedural shield protecting the Cuban regime's expropriated empire.

Natalia Suyos · Jun 29, 2026

The Bank That Has No Wires

Natalia Suyos · Jun 28, 2026

The Blueprint That Nobody Asked For

Cuba's National Assembly just rubber-stamped 176 sweeping economic reforms — private banks, foreign investment, unlimited private workers — the biggest overhaul since 1959. The blueprints were always in the drawer. What changed is that the regime finally ran out of excuses not to open it.

Natalia Suyos · Jun 27, 2026

The Ward That Is Still Open

Natalia Suyos · Jun 26, 2026

The Refinery That Owes for Its Own Confiscation

Natalia Suyos · Jun 25, 2026

The Ore That Cannot Be Sold

Washington has designated GEOMINERA—Cuba's non-nickel mining enterprise and its Australian partner Antilles Gold's anchor—under E.O. 14404, while simultaneously placing Alejandro Castro Espín's adult family member on the SDN list. The sanctions architecture has moved from targeting entities to targeting households.

Natalia Suyos · Jun 24, 2026

The Ledger That Cannot Be Spent

Natalia Suyos · Jun 23, 2026

The Door That Opens Into a Wall

Cuba's National Assembly unanimously passed 176 free-market reforms on June 19 — the most radical economic overhaul since the revolution. But the same sanctions architecture Washington spent 2026 building makes every investor who might answer that invitation a sanctions target.

Natalia Suyos · Jun 22, 2026

The Vault That Opened From the Inside

Natalia Suyos · Jun 21, 2026

The Family on the List

On June 4, Washington designated the wives, sons, and grandsons of Cuba's ruling families under a new secondary-sanctions framework. When the family becomes the target, the policy has stopped pretending the state and the bloodline are separate things.

Natalia Suyos · Jun 20, 2026

The Institute of Friendship Is on the List — But So Is Everything Else

Natalia Suyos · Jun 19, 2026

The Blueprint That Cannot Be Read

On June 12, Díaz-Canel unveiled Cuba's most ambitious economic reform package in years — then admitted he couldn't share the details because the enemy might be reading. The blueprint is the message.

Natalia Suyos · Jun 18, 2026

The Aid Ship in the Revolution's Harbor

A Colombian ship carrying food, medicine, and solar panels docked in Havana Bay on June 12 — the latest in a series of humanitarian deliveries to a country that once sent doctors and solidarity outward to the world. The direction of the current has reversed.

Natalia Suyos · Jun 17, 2026

The Private Sector Was Supposed to Be the Point

The Trump administration has blocked a Florida company's contracted delivery of 250,000 barrels of fuel to Cuba's private sector. Washington spent a decade insisting the private sector was the point — and then killed the shipment.

Natalia Suyos · Jun 16, 2026

The Chart on the Prosecutor's Table

Natalia Suyos · Jun 14, 2026