The View from Biscayne Bay
High above the salt spray of Biscayne Bay, the conversations in Miami’s gated communities rarely focus on the bread lines in Old Havana. Instead, the air is thick with talk of equity, real estate, and the inevitable collapse of the Cuban state. Members of the Cuban American National Chamber of Commerce (CANCC) hold meetings where the primary topic is not relief, but reconstruction. They speak of a post-communist Cuba as a blank slate for enterprise, a market ripe for the insertion of American capital and the establishment of a modern stock exchange. For this elite, the end of the Revolution is less a humanitarian crisis to be managed and more a logistical hurdle to be cleared.
These planners envision a rapid pivot toward a market-driven economy. Their models include privatizing utility networks, upgrading crumbling telecommunications, and inviting international conglomerates to manage Cuba’s nickel and cobalt mines. It is a vision of efficiency and growth. Yet, the blueprints they draw often lack the names of the people who currently live in those streets. While they calculate the ROI on rebuilding Havana's Malecón, the people on the ground face a reality of rolling blackouts and empty shelves.
The Paradox of Pressure
A deep contradiction defines the political strategy of the Miami diaspora. On one hand, the CANCC and its allies advocate for a total overhaul of the Cuban economic system. On the other, they remain the most vocal supporters of the "maximum pressure" campaign. The U.S. embargo and strict sanctions on petroleum imports do not just target the Cuban government; they starve the island of the fuel needed for hospital generators and food distribution. To support these sanctions is to ensure the very social collapse that the CANCC plans to capitalize on.
If the goal is a stable transition, the current policy of economic strangulation seems counterproductive. The shortage of diesel and electricity makes the island brittle. The sanctions create the instability that the exile elite claim they want to end, but they destroy the social fabric that would be necessary to sustain a new democracy. It is a strategy of managed desperation. By starving the current system, the proponents of these sanctions ensure that when the regime falls, the Cuban people will be too hungry and tired to demand anything more than the bare essentials.
The Shadow of 1959
For many in the Cuban working class, the idea of "privatization" does not sound like freedom. It sounds like the reversal of the 1959 Revolution. Much of the CANCC's vision involves reclaiming or purchasing assets that were nationalized decades ago. While this is a matter of legal restitution in the eyes of the diaspora, it raises a searing question about who will own Cuba once the transition occurs. If the assets go to wealthy investors and the returning diaspora, what happens to the people who have lived in those houses and worked those fields for sixty years?
The transition from a command economy to a market economy is rarely a smooth ride. In Eastern Europe after 1989, the rush toward privatization often led to the rise of oligarchs who stripped state assets for pennies on the dollar. There is a high risk that a post-regime Cuba will see a similar pattern. The most vulnerable—the elderly, the subsistence farmers, and the urban workers—may find themselves displaced by a new class of property owners who arrived with suitcases full of dollars and a sudden interest in Cuban real estate.
The Fragility of Middle-Ground Reforms
Recent years saw the Cuban government attempt its own, cautious brand of liberalization. The rise of the "cuentapropistas," or self-employed workers, allowed for a small degree of private enterprise in services and food. This was a desperate attempt to patch the leaks in a sinking ship. However, the CANCC has largely dismissed these incremental reforms as too little, too late, or fundamentally flawed. They do not want a gradual evolution; they want a total reset.
This rejection of the middle ground leaves the Cuban people trapped between two extremes. On one side, the state remains rigid, clinging to an outdated central planning model that cannot provide basic medicine. On the other, the Miami elite propose a shock therapy of capitalism that ignores the immediate, visceral needs of the population. For the average citizen in a province like Holguín, the debate between state-led reform and market-led reconstruction is a luxury they cannot afford. They need electricity today, not a stock exchange tomorrow.
The Humanitarian Deficit
Every economic model prepared in Miami ignores the looming social catastrophe. A sudden transition in a country with crippled infrastructure and no social safety net is a recipe for mass migration and chaos. The current state of Cuba is one of chronic malnutrition and failing sanitation. If the regime collapses, the vacuum will not be filled by a ready-made government, but by a desperate population competing for scarce resources.
The "Day After" prepared for by the wealthy looks like a business venture. For the Cuban people, it might look like a new kind of struggle. If the transition focuses solely on the rapid return of capital and the restoration of property rights, the social inequality currently present in Cuba will not just continue; it will explode. The wealth gap will no longer be a result of political privilege, but of raw, unmitigated market access. As the elite prepare their spreadsheets, the people of Cuba are simply waiting to see if they will have bread in the new world.
