Castroism’s Empire Crumbles

Details

Published: 05 June 2026

Castroism’s Empire Crumbles

Leer en Español

For decades, opponents of economic pressure against the Castro-Communist regime insisted that sanctions did not work. According to this conventional wisdom, Havana had learned to survive every restriction, adapt to every obstacle, and transform every hardship into political propaganda. Yet the dramatic developments following President Donald Trump's Executive Order 14404 have exposed the weakness of that argument. The events of the past month demonstrate that sanctions not only work, but that they work most effectively when they are designed around a clear understanding of the regime's actual structure and sources of power.

Signed on May 1, 2026, Executive Order 14404 represents the most serious challenge ever directed against the financial architecture that has sustained Castro-Communism since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rather than focusing exclusively on individual officials or symbolic restrictions, the order targets the extensive network of foreign corporations, investors, banks, shipping companies, hotel operators, and commercial partners. These have enabled the regime to survive long after the disappearance of Soviet subsidies.

Read more: Castroism’s Empire Crumbles

Details

Published: 22 May 2026

Honoring Pedro Luis Boitel and the Demand for Accountability

Leer en Español

This coming Monday, May 25, 2026, marks the 54 th anniversary of the death of Pedro Luis Boitel, a courageous Cuban patriot and emblematic victim of the Castro regime’s brutal political prison system. Boitel died on May 25, 1972, after enduring 53 days on a hunger strike. He had launched the protest to denounce the inhumane treatment of political prisoners and the regime’s arbitrary extension of his sentence. Despite his critical condition, authorities failed to provide adequate medical care when he was moved to the prison infirmary.

Boitel’s death was entirely preventable. The Castro-Communist regime chose to let him perish. His sacrifice remains a powerful symbol of the thousands of Cubans who have suffered torture, dehumanization, and extrajudicial killing under more than six decades of communist rule. Boitel’s story continues to expose the systematic cruelty that defined Cuba’s prisons and the regime’s ruthless suppression of dissent. A horrific fact that remains true to this day.

Read more: Honoring Pedro Luis Boitel and the Demand for Accountability

Details

Published: 15 May 2026

The CIA Director’s Visit to Havana: An Ultimatum in Broad Daylight

Leer en Español

The sight is repulsive on its face. A high official of the United States government, the world’s leading democracy, sitting across the table from the uniformed architects of one of the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running tyrannies. Yet context, timing, and deliberate symbolism transform what might appear as mere engagement into something far sterner: a public ultimatum to the Castro regime. Change your political system, or we will change it for you—by whatever means necessary.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana on May 14, 2026, meeting not with the regime’s civilian figureheads but with its military and intelligence brass. Present were Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas, the head of Cuban intelligence, and Raúl Guillermo “Raulito” Rodríguez Castro, grandson of the 94-year-old dictator Raúl Castro. The visit occurred against the backdrop of Cuba’s collapsing energy sector, with the island announcing it had exhausted fuel oil supplies for domestic use and power plants. Another variable that weighs against the communist dictatorship is the mounting public display by Cuban society of discontent with the system and regime that cause these ills.

Read more: The CIA Director’s Visit to Havana: An Ultimatum in Broad Daylight

Details

Published: 08 May 2026

The End of Sherritt: A Victory for Helms-Burton and the Power of Targeted Sanctions

Leer en Español

After more than three decades of open defiance, Sherritt International—the Canadian company dubbed by Bloomberg in 1995 and once hailed as Fidel Castro’s “favorite capitalist”—has been forced out of Cuba. On May 7, 2026, Sherritt announced the immediate suspension of all its direct operations in the island’s joint ventures. The trigger was President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14404, signed on May 1, which expanded sanctions on key sectors and imposed secondary sanctions on foreign banks dealing with blocked Cuban entities. What the Cuban regime celebrated as an exemplary partnership for 35 years collapsed in a single week. This outcome powerfully validates the Helms-Burton Act, particularly its Title III, and demonstrates that sustained, targeted American sanctions against the Castro-Communist regime deliver concrete results by starving it of hard currency.

Sherritt’s journey into Cuba exemplified a deeply concessionary capitalist relationship that fused the regime’s control of expropriated resources with Western capital, technology, and market access. Founded in 1927 as Sherritt Gordon Mines Limited, the company faced near insolvency by 1990. Under Ian W. Delaney—who openly displayed a family photo with Castro and called Cuba his favorite—it turned to Havana in 1991 amid the Soviet collapse and Cuba’s “Special Period.” The linkage of the Moa nickel deposit and Cuba’s processing capacity with Sherritt’s Alberta refinery and its access to low-cost energy proved a stroke of genius for both parties. In December 1994, Sherritt formed a 50/50 joint venture with Cuba’s Compañía General de Níquel de Cuba. The partnership quickly proved profitable, posting $14.3 million in earnings on $131 million in sales in its first quarter.

Read more: The End of Sherritt: A Victory for Helms-Burton and the Power of Targeted Sanctions