Is Cuba Poised for Regime Change?

Ever since Communist revolutionary Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, the United States has been trying to oust the country’s leaders. It hasn’t gone so well, though, as U.S. president after U.S. president has tried various means to bring about regime change.

The latest efforts by the U.S. include blockading energy shipments and ramping up already crippling sanctions. Inside the small Caribbean country, living conditions continue to deteriorate, as it runs low on energy to power the economy, reports indicate. 

Is there any chance that the Cuban regime will fall under U.S. pressure?Consuelo Cruz, associate professor of political science, says that recent events in Venezuela might be an indicator of how things could play out in Cuba.

Since a U.S. military operation removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in early January, there has been more openness on the part of the Venezuela government to talk about business partnerships with American companies, but “there has been no regime change there,” Cruz says. “The state apparatus remains extensive, corrupt, repressive, and—for as long as the emergent American pragmatism holds in Latin America—stable.”

It’s likely, she says, that the U.S. will try to push for more business-friendly and pro-market policies in Cuba, and as in Venezuela, for the release of political prisoners and tactical changes in government personnel. “But change in the polity’s core norms and rules—that is to say, the regime—is not likely,” Cruz says. “Instead, as in Venezuela, the state will probably continue to manage and, whenever necessary, suppress destabilizing social and political forces, even if these forces happen to be pro-democracy.”

To learn more, we spoke with Cruz about the prospects for regime change in Cuba, options open for the U.S., and what might lie ahead.

What accounts for the longevity of the Cuban regime since 1959?

It’s a combination of coercion and legitimacy. On the coercive side, they jail and intimidate citizens. In the early years, there were also formal executions and extra-judicial killings of dissenters and opponents.

Additionally, the regime began in the mid-1960s to make strategic use of mass migrations, allowing and/or forcing desperate Cubans and those it deemed undesirable to leave the island in boatlifts. The Mariel boatlift of 1980 saw more than 100,000 Cubans head to Florida.

On top of that, the authoritarian regime is backed by strong military and security apparatuses, plus a large paramilitary force. 

And let’s not forget that straddling coercion and legitimacy has been the institutionalized Communist Party of Cuba, which is constitutionally authorized and deeply embedded in the political economy. 

How does legitimacy of the regime play out? 

The legitimacy side of the equation should not be underestimated. The revolution’s foundational story has been eroded but not displaced. Nationalism remains a vital force, and the very concept of national sovereignty is entwined with the historical memory of a triumphant revolution standing in defiant opposition to the United States. 

The U.S. blockade, for instance, not only took a punishing economic toll on ordinary Cubans for decades, but counterproductively, helped obscure the insidious ramifications of the regime’s orthodox policies. 

To be sure, Fidel did allow reform experiments, but they were strictly limited in scope and depth, and even those experiments he truncated and reversed. Ultimately, he settled on a dual-economy model, with a segmented and dollarized tourism sector that brought no real benefits to most Cubans, who remained trapped in the socialist sphere. 

And yet, Fidel’s charismatic figure loomed large in the national imagination. Most Cubans credited him and the party for significant gains in education, health, and for the greater inclusion of subaltern groups like Afro-Cubans. 

Today, the older generations are far more positive in their assessment of Fidel than younger ones. But while Cubans of all ages and points of view venerate the memory of the great pro-independence poet, José Martí, no other political figure, past or present, approximates Fidel’s mythological stature. 

What might be changing that equation now? 

Severe energy shortages have made Cuba quite vulnerable to the designs of the Trump administration. As you know, everything turns on energy—the supply of water, food provision, medical services, trash collection. The brownouts and blackouts of previous years, and the more recent collapse of the electricity grid, have been disastrous. Elevators, to take just one example, cannot operate—a terrible situation for the elderly, the sick, and the handicapped.

Which group of Cubans is most opposed to the regime?

Young people in Cuba are not fans of the regime—so they either emigrate, or to put it bluntly, they’re not even born—the birth rate is at a historic low, and the median age hovers around 42 or 43. This is a decidedly aging population.

What kind of change do Cubans themselves want vs. what the U.S. might want?

The anecdotal evidence is that Cubans want less outrageous privilege for the high officialdom and the well-connected and a better life for the general population. In brief, and as independent podcasters on the island insist, systemic reform is urgently needed if there’s to be more democracy and a meaningful degree of economic rationality. That would mean a profoundly reformed regime.

But at the same time Cubans remain ambivalent toward the Cuban diaspora, including the overseas relatives who have been their lifeline. The islanders’ fear is that, endowed with vastly superior financial and political capital, returning Cubans will prove overbearing in business and politics. 

And while the island’s population also seems generally open to improved relations with the United States, the majority likely reject the scenario in which the American government dictates terms and its emissaries and proxies oversee the conduct of public affairs. 

Is it likely that change in Cuba might be along the lines of what’s happened in Venezuela this year—maybe a change in top leadership and more openness to investment from outside, but no substantive change?

Economically Cuba is in tatters, and the social conditions are horrific. I think the Cuban people are not ready to let the Americans take over the island, but they are ready to make a transition to something like the Venezuela hybrid, with more economic opportunities. What is emerging is a mix of pragmatism and corruption.

But the structure of power in both Cuba and Venezuela essentially stays the same?

There’s a high probability that it stays the same.