For over six decades, the Cuban regime has built its political survival on a single, monolithic narrative: the U.S. “blockade” serves as the universal explanation for every economic failure, every shortage, every blackout that devastates Cubans’ daily lives. This storyline has been repeated so relentlessly that it has solidified into an accepted truth across wide sectors of international public opinion.
Documented reality tells a radically different story. When you examine actual trade flows, verifiable financial transactions, and the real distribution of resources on the island, the regime’s argument collapses. The economic consequences that Havana attributes to the embargo cannot be sustained in the face of empirical evidence.
Behind this gap between narrative and reality lies a calculated strategy. The Castro elite has spent decades perfecting the art of turning its own administrative incompetence into geopolitical victimhood, its institutionalized corruption into heroic resistance, and its extractive nature into an inevitable consequence of external hostility. This narrative distortion has been extraordinarily effective: while the world looks to Washington for blame, the true perpetrators of Cuba’s tragedy continue to rule from Havana with near-total impunity.
In less than a week, the United Nations General Assembly will once again vote on Cuba’s resolution condemning the U.S. embargo. As it has every year since 1992, the ritual will play out: Cuba will present astronomical figures of alleged damages, dozens of countries will deliver solidarity speeches, and the resolution will pass by an overwhelming majority. What won’t be discussed in that chamber are the data and documented evidence of multi-million-dollar trade transactions, revelations of financial reserves exceeding those of entire nations, and the real architecture of a system that has mastered the art of turning its own incompetence into geopolitical victimhood.
The UN vote will not determine the fate of the U.S. embargo, which will remain in place regardless of the outcome. But it will determine whether the international community continues to legitimize an explanation that absolves the Cuban regime of all responsibility for its people’s suffering—while that same regime keeps hidden $18 billion that could resolve the very crises it blames on external factors.
I’m writing this article because I too was once deceived by this victimhood narrative. No one who loves their country wants to see it harmed, of course. That’s exactly what the regime’s sinister rhetoric exploits. Today, with access to information, I can dismantle the rhetoric that once spoke so persuasively to me.
The Trade That Supposedly Can’t Happen
Official records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture directly contradict the narrative of a “total blockade.” In 2024, U.S. exports to Cuba surpassed $370 million in agricultural products and food. These included frozen chicken, soybeans, corn, and wheat—exactly the kinds of basic goods that an alleged blockaded country shouldn’t be able to purchase from its main geopolitical adversary.
The increase in trade has been steady and dramatic. In February 2025, exports reached $47 million, the highest monthly level since 2014. That figure marks a 75.1% increase compared to the same month in the previous year. Between January and June 2025, cumulative sales reached $243.3 million, a 16.6% increase over the same period in 2024. By the end of 2025, total trade is projected to exceed $585 million, based on current trends. According to USTEC records, Cuba’s total purchases from the U.S. since 2001 exceed $7.679 billion (USD).
This figure becomes even more significant when you consider that the U.S. has become one of Cuba’s top five food suppliers. The paradox is impossible to ignore: the country allegedly “blockading” Cuba to the point of starvation regularly sells it chicken, rice, milk, and medicine—on an increasing scale.
And trade diversification goes far beyond food. In the early months of 2025, Cuba imported $15.3 million worth of used vehicles from the U.S., as well as motorcycles, solar panels, agricultural machinery, medical equipment, industrial chemicals, and refrigeration systems. The import catalog includes everything from John Deere tractors to communion wafers, premium coffee, long-grain rice, fortified powdered milk, and select cuts of pork.
The legal framework that allows these transactions has existed for decades, directly contradicting the under-siege narrative. The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TSREEA) of 2000 and the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA) of 1992 explicitly authorize the sale of food, medicine, and humanitarian supplies to Cuba. The only requirement: Cuba must pay in cash. No credit, no deferred financing—but also, no absolute prohibition on trade, especially in essential goods.
The real restrictions are mostly financial: Cuba cannot request loans from U.S. banks or access capital markets in New York. But buying basic goods with cash has never been banned.
This technical detail is critical in dismantling the regime’s official narrative. Havana portrays the embargo as a blockade that prevents any trade. The reality shows multi-million-dollar, growing, and diversified transactions.
A History of Systematic Nonpayment
Cuba’s restriction in international markets has a specific name: credit distrust. For decades, the regime has built a catastrophic track record as a debtor, marked by repeated defaults, endless renegotiations, and a persistent unwillingness—or more accurately, a calculated refusal—to honor its financial obligations.
The numbers from the Paris Club illustrate this with startling clarity. Cuba currently owes $4.62 billion to this group, making it the second-largest debtor in Latin America, surpassed only by Venezuela. That figure is significant on its own, but it becomes even more revealing in historical context.
In 2015, the Paris Club made an extraordinary move: it forgave $8.5 billion out of a total $11.1 billion debt. That wiped out over 75% of what Cuba owed. The remaining balance was restructured on extremely generous terms: minimal annual payments until 2033, with a five-year interest-free grace period. Few nations have received such favorable treatment.
The Cuban regime’s response to this international generosity has been systematic default. Since 2019, Havana has failed to pay more than $200 million in agreed-upon installments. Renegotiations have occurred every few months—in September 2023, in January 2025, and so on. Each meeting follows the same script: Havana asks for more time, creditors express “understanding of the difficulties,” and the payment schedule is once again pushed into an indefinite future.
This pattern of nonpayment extends beyond the Paris Club. The list of debt cancellations Cuba has received in the last two decades is staggering. China forgave $6 billion in 2011. Mexico canceled $487 million in 2013. Russia wrote off $35 billion in 2014—90% of a debt inherited from the Soviet era—and has since granted further deferrals.
Despite more than $54 billion in forgiven debt, Cuba continues to default and rack up new obligations. Its current external debt exceeds $40 billion, including unpaid commitments to Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Spain, France, Austria, Belgium, and Japan, along with active legal disputes with private creditors.
One example is the CRF1 fund—a Cayman Islands-based fund that sued Cuba in London for over $78 million related to loans granted in the 1980s. The Cuban government refused to recognize the legitimacy of the claim.
Cuba’s credit situation has become so dire that even the regime can no longer hide it. In July 2024, Economy and Planning Minister Joaquín Alonso Vázquez admitted to the National Assembly that the government’s foreign currency income is “insufficient” and that access to external credit is “virtually nonexistent.” This official admission confirms what international financial markets have known for years: lending money to Cuba is equivalent to giving it away.
The Military’s Hidden Wealth
The regime’s official narrative of poverty caused by the “blockade” completely collapses when you examine the revelations surrounding GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A.), the military-run conglomerate that controls the most lucrative sectors of the Cuban economy. A leak of 22 internal financial documents, analyzed by journalist Nora Gámez Torres for the Miami Herald, exposed a reality Cuban authorities have concealed for decades.
Financial statements for 2023 and 2024 show that GAESA holds at least $18 billion in liquid assets. Of that amount, $14.5 billion is deposited in bank accounts and financial institutions owned by GAESA, readily available for immediate use. To understand the scale of these numbers, consider this: these reserves exceed those of countries like Costa Rica, Uruguay, or Panama.
Only in the first quarter of 2024, the military conglomerate generated $2.1 billion in net profits. CIMEX, its main company managing retail, banking, and international trade businesses, contributed half of those earnings. The tourism company Gaviota, another key subsidiary, held $4.3 billion in its bank accounts as of March 2024. That single company alone holds nearly 13 times more liquid resources than the $339 million the regime itself estimates is needed to supply all the pharmacies in the country for an entire year.
Economist Pavel Vidal described GAESA as a “parallel central bank” operating entirely outside the formal economic system. The conglomerate hoards foreign currency with an ultra-conservative policy: stockpiling dollars and operating in pesos, shielding itself from the inflation and devaluation ravaging the rest of the Cuban economy. This financial strategy ensures that resources remain concentrated in military hands while the population faces critical shortages of all kinds of basic goods.
GAESA’s organizational structure, as journalist Marc Bermúdez described it, functions like a multi-layered business Matryoshka doll. Although formally attached to the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), the conglomerate controls entire strategic sectors of the economy: tourism, remittances, retail trade, telecommunications, ports, customs, and finance. It operates through at least 25 companies identified in the leaked documents, including CIMEX, Gaviota, TRD Caribe, Almacenes Universales, and the Banco Financiero Internacional.
Opacity defines every aspect of GAESA’s operations. The conglomerate is not accountable to the National Assembly, nor to any civilian auditing body. Former comptroller general Gladys Bejerano publicly admitted in 2024 that she could not audit the military conglomerate because it operated outside her jurisdiction. Shortly after, she was removed from her position without official explanation.
The leaked documents also reveal the destination of these massive resources. Despite its extraordinary income, GAESA spent $5 billion in just five months between March and August 2024. Most of this budget was allocated to the construction of luxury hotels. Between 2021 and 2023, 36% of all government investment was funneled into hotel projects, while only 2.9% went to agriculture and a miserable 1.9% to health programs.
This allocation of resources exposes the true priorities of power in Cuba. While the healthcare system lacks 70% of essential medications, GAESA is building five-star hotels that sit empty. Seven out of ten hotel rooms in Cuba are unoccupied due to the collapse of tourism. Gaviota’s new properties add to this idle capacity, representing a multi-million-dollar investment in infrastructure that brings no economic return—while the population goes hungry.
The financial analysis also shows that GAESA receives direct subsidies from the state budget. Almest, the conglomerate’s hotel investment firm, received 668 million pesos from the public treasury in 2023, plus an additional 4.7 billion pesos in state investments. In return, Almest reported only two million pesos in taxes. This tax structure turns GAESA into a net drain on public resources: it extracts funds from the state but contributes almost nothing to public revenue.
The revelation of these figures triggered a furious reaction from the regime. The official Cuban website Cubadebate launched a personal smear campaign against journalist Nora Gámez Torres, accusing her of being a “CIA agent” and questioning her academic credentials. Notably, the article did not dispute or refute a single figure from the investigation. If the documents were fake or the numbers inaccurate, the regime could simply publish its own financial statements and disprove the allegations. Instead, it opted for a personal attack—indirectly confirming the leak’s accuracy by remaining silent on the actual data.
The Resources Exist—What’s Lacking Is the Will to Use Them
The question that naturally arises from all this data is as obvious as it is unsettling: What could Cuba do with $18 billion in immediately available cash?
Let’s start with the healthcare system, whose collapse the regime routinely blames on the embargo. The government estimates it needs $339 million per year to supply all pharmacies in the country with essential medications. GAESA’s liquid assets could cover that for more than 54 consecutive years without receiving a single additional dollar in income. Currently, the healthcare system lacks 70% of essential medications. This shortage is not due to a lack of resources—but to their deliberate concentration in military hands.
The energy sector offers equally revealing figures. Keeping the national electrical grid running—including repairs, maintenance, and fuel—requires about $250 million annually, according to conservative technical estimates. With GAESA’s resources, Cuba could ensure stable electricity for 74 years. Meanwhile, ordinary Cubans suffer blackouts of up to 20 hours a day, which spoil perishable food, paralyze economic activity, and plunge entire neighborhoods into darkness for days on end.
The external debt also finds an immediate solution with these resources. The $4.62 billion that Cuba owes the Paris Club represents only 25% of GAESA’s liquidity. Full repayment of that debt, along with a significant reduction in other international obligations, could be covered—and over $13 billion would still remain. Rebuilding Cuba’s credit credibility—which would allow it to re-access international financial markets—is entirely within reach through a political decision to use these funds.
Food imports provide another enlightening calculation. In 2024, Cuba imported approximately $2 billion worth of food. With the liquidity available in the military’s coffers, the country could cover all of its food import needs for more than nine years, while simultaneously investing heavily in agricultural recovery to reduce external dependency. Instead, seven out of ten Cubans have skipped at least one meal per day due to lack of money or available food.
The collapsed productive infrastructure also has a repair price tag. Modernizing obsolete industrial plants, renewing the public transportation fleet, and rebuilding rural roads to bring agricultural goods from farms to urban markets—all of these critical investments would easily fit within the existing resources. Technical estimates suggest that a significant infrastructure overhaul would require between $3 and $5 billion over five years. GAESA holds nearly four times that amount in immediately available cash.
Even assuming the continued need for massive fuel imports, these resources would allow Cuba to maintain a stable energy supply while developing alternatives. Oil and its derivatives cost Cuba about $3 billion annually. GAESA’s $18 billion would cover more than six years of full petroleum imports at the current consumption rate.
This reality completely transforms the regime’s embargo narrative into a tool of internal political management. While the population blames its hardships on external factors, the elite controlling GAESA can continue hoarding wealth without facing questions about resource distribution. The extreme poverty affecting 89% of the Cuban population coexists with liquid reserves greater than those of entire nations because the system is designed precisely to produce this result: concentration at the top, scarcity at the bottom, and a convenient external explanation that deflects all responsibility.
Victimhood as Diplomatic Engineering
The narrative of a genocidal blockade goes beyond domestic propaganda to become a tool of surgical foreign policy strategy. Each year, the UN General Assembly reenacts the same ritual: Cuba presents a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo and receives overwhelming support. In 2024, the vote resulted in 187 countries in favor, with only the United States and Israel opposing, and one abstention (Moldova).
This annual diplomatic victory serves multiple strategic functions for the regime. First, it internationally validates the victimhood narrative, legitimizing Cuba’s explanation for its economic problems in the eyes of the global community. Second, it reinforces the regime’s political identity as David facing Goliath, a position that resonates deeply with the anti-imperialist sentiment of many governments in the Global South. Third, it allows the regime to portray itself as the victim of an international injustice, deserving of solidarity and diplomatic concessions.
The figures that Cuba presents at these international forums reachastronomical proportions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims “losses of $7.556 billion in the past year” and “cumulative damages exceeding $170 billion” due to the embargo. These calculations lack any transparent or verifiable methodology. They include abstract concepts like “lost profits” and projections of hypothetical gains that Cuba supposedly would have achieved in an alternate scenario without the embargo.
Thetechnical weakness of these numbers contrasts sharply with their political effectiveness. Few governments question the methodology or ask for empirical evidence. The condemnation of the embargo has become a diplomatic ritual that many countries carry out automatically—without analyzing whether the factual premises behind it match observable reality.
Here lies a contradiction that UN votes systematically ignore:
How can a country that is genuinely blockaded import hundreds of millions of dollars annually from its alleged blocker?How does this narrative explain that the United States is one of Cuba’s top five food suppliers?Why does a regime that claims $170 billion in damages sit on $18 billion in liquid reserves—without using them to ease its people’s suffering?
These questions rarely surface in multilateral debates. The UN’s voting format encourages binary positions: either vote against the embargo or in favor of it. The complexity of assessing whether the embargo actually produces the effects Cuba attributes to it, whether domestic factorsplay a greater role in the Cuban crisis, or whether the ruling elite shares significant responsibility for the population’s hardships—all of this is lost in such an oversimplified framework.
The governments that vote each year in favor of the Cuban resolution do so with varied motivations. Some express genuine anti-imperialist solidarity. Others want to maintain cordial relations with Havana. Many of them act out ofinstitutional inertia, continuing positions set decades ago without critical reassessment. Few seem to have updated their analysis based on current trade data or therevelations about the financial resources the Cuban regime actually controls.
This international acquiescence produces tangible and harmful consequences. Each vote that validates the Cuban narrative without critically examining it strengthens the regime’s position before its own population. When the United Nations condemns the embargo by a vote of 187 to two, the Cuban government can present the result as irrefutable proof that the international community recognizes the embargo as the primary cause of the country’s problems. The Cuban population, bombarded daily with this message, has less room to question whether there might, in fact, be domestic responsibilities for their situation.
Cuba’s diplomatic strategy also skillfully exploits broader geopolitical tensions. Presenting the embargo as a manifestation of U.S. imperialism resonates in contexts where many countries harbor their own grievances or conflicts with Washington. Cuba positions itself as a symbol of resistance, turning its annual UN vote into a referendum on U.S. foreign policy rather than an objective assessment of the causes of the Cuban crisis.
As this diplomatic cycle continues, the Cuban regime secures symbolic victories in New York and Geneva that bolster its international legitimacy, keeps alive a narrative that diverts blame for domestic economic disaster, and avoids accountability for decisions such as holding $18 billion in military reserves while the population lacks basic medicines. Victimhood has ceased to be mere propaganda—it has become a system of governance: a mechanism that simultaneously justifies failure abroad and suppresses dissent at home through the systematic externalization of all responsibility.
The Business of Mercenaries
The moral contradiction of the Cuban regime reaches its most brutal expression in the mass recruitment of young Cubans to serve as mercenaries in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While Havana tours world capitals demanding solidarity against the “genocidal blockade” that condemns its people to hunger, the same regime facilitates the deployment of tens of thousands of its citizens to die in a war that has nothing to do with them.
The numbers confirmed by multiple sources are chilling. Ukrainian officials testified before the U.S. Congress that Russia has recruited approximately 20,000 Cubans, with 7,000 already deployed to active combat zones. Western intelligence estimates suggest the real number could be as high as 25,000. This contingent makes Cuba the largest foreign supplier of fighters for Moscow, even surpassing the 12,000 troops sent by North Korea.
The mechanics of the recruitment process expose the contradictions in the official discourse. The regime insists these are “human trafficking networks” operating without its knowledge or authorization, but the narrative collapses under the weight of accumulated evidence. New direct Havana-Moscow flight routes operated by Aeroflot began precisely as recruitment ramped up. Military contracts arrive translated into Spanish. Recruits undergo medical exams coordinated in Cuban facilities. The passports of those traveling lack exit stamps, a deliberate technique to leave no paper trail of state involvement.
The individual motivation of the recruits stems directly from the economic conditions created by the regime itself. Russia offers salaries of approximately $2,000 per month. In Cuba, the average monthly salary is barely $20. For a young person watching their family go hungry, enduring 20-hour blackouts, and seeing no prospects for improvement on the island, the Russian offer represents an astronomical figure—100 times their current income. It means the chance to send money home. Perhaps, eventually, access to Russian citizenship and a final escape from the system that has condemned them to poverty.
Ukrainian authorities have captured several Cuban mercenaries during military operations. The testimonies of these prisoners align on key points: many believed they were going to Russia for construction jobs, only to discover upon arrival that they were being sent to the front lines. Their passports were confiscated. They were threatened with imprisonment or deportation if they refused to sign military contracts. They received minimal training—just one week, in many cases—before being sent into intense combat zones.
At least 40 Cubans have died on the Ukrainian front, according to figures confirmed by passports recovered by Ukrainian forces. The actual number is likely several times higher. Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Russian Duma’s Defense Committee, publicly confirmed the mass recruitment plans in October 2025. “A true Cuban patriot cannot be forbidden from loving Russia,” he declared, adding that Moscow welcomes with open arms those who wish to join the Russian Armed Forces in their “righteous fight against global fascism.” This official confirmation from Moscow was met with no diplomatic protest from Havana, revealing the Cuban regime’s complicity.
The Geopolitical Dimension of the Recruitment
The geopolitical scope of this recruitment effort goes beyond the immediate humanitarian horror. Cuba is now part of an expanding military axis linking Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. The dispatch of Cuban fighters to Ukraine forms part of this broader authoritarian realignment. For Moscow, the use of foreign mercenaries helps minimize domestic political costs from Russian casualties, which, according to British intelligence, have exceeded one million. For Havana, it provides access to modern military training and reinforces its strategic alliance with Putin.
The Cost of Perpetuating the Lie of the Blockade
According to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, 89% of Cuban families live in extreme poverty. Seven out of ten people have stopped eating at least one meal a day due to lack of money or food. Blackouts last up to 20 continuous hours. The healthcare system—once a source of pride for the regime—now lacks 70% of essential medicines. People search for food in the trash.
The international community enables this operation every time it mechanically votes against the embargo without examining the factual premises that underpin Cuba’s position. Every UN resolution that ignores actual trade data, that overlooks the existence of GAESA and its billions, that uncritically accepts the regime’s methodology-free calculations, reinforces the narrative. Every government that expresses solidarity with Cuba based on this distorted version of reality contributes to perpetuating the system that keeps Cubans in misery.
The consequences of this complicity are tangible. While the world condemns the embargo that supposedly causes hunger in Cuba, thousands of young Cubans are recruited as mercenaries to die in Ukraine, driven by the economic desperation the regime itself creates and sustains. While nations vote in solidarity with a “blockaded Cuba,” GAESA invests billions in hotels no one will ever occupy.
Unmasking this farce is not an abstract academic exercise. It matters—because as long as it persists unchallenged by data and evidence, theCuban people will continue to pay the price. Every day the world accepts the blockade narrative as a sufficient explanation for Cuba’s crisis is one more day the regime evades accountability for its decisions. Every UN vote that validates this version without scrutiny becomes tacit permission for the continued concentration of resources in military hands, while the population suffers avoidable deprivations.
As long as this narrative distortion continues to function in international forums, as long as governments continue voting based onideological solidarity rather than empirical assessment, and as long as critical analysis of the regime’s domestic responsibility is considered politically incorrect, the current system will remain intact. And with it, so will the suffering of a people held hostage by an elite that has repeatedly shown it prefers the accumulation of power and capitalat the expense of collective well-being.
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