Майамі підхоплює тривога за падінням кастризм: “Нехай станеться те, що має статися, інакше ми ніколи не будемо вільні”
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The burns on Ingrid Arenas’s hands don’t reflect all the pizzas she’s actually baked to make a living. In February 19, she arrived at Tío Colo, her pizzeria on Coral Way in Miami, and started early, preparing orders of Cuban pizzas and ice cream sundaes. In Hialeah, her son and daughter-in-law run a similar establishment, serving dozens of customers, and even her five young grandchildren help prepare or deliver food. Business is booming; she seems to have everything she needs.
«Я дуже щаслива тут», — говорить Інґрід, 62 рокiв, розмірковуючи про понад два десятиліття, що вона живе в Сполучених Штатах. Проте щось важко тисне їй на серце: «Куба — це найбільша страждання, яке я маю», зізнається вона. І воно зникне лише в той день, коли вона зможе відкрити піцерію у Тіо Коло на острові — тобто gdy Куба стане країною, до якої можуть повернутись її емігранти.
The ice cream cones she sold from a bicycle in 1990s Cuba are the same ones she makes today. That’s why Ingrid insists that Tío Colo was founded in Cuba and took root much later in Miami. Now, as people talk of imminent change on the island, she imagines having a pizzeria in Havana as easily as in the heart of the Escambray Mountains. «Мій обов’язок — відбудувати країну», — каже вона. «Ми почали з нуля багато разів; ми знаємо, як це. Так, Куба розірвана, але її знову відбудовують».
A glimmer of hope has begun to re-emerge among a disillusioned exile community that, at times, had lost hope for Cuba. José Victorero, the head of maintenance at the legendary Versailles restaurant, who arrived in Miami at the age of five and is now 62, thought he would die «before the end of communism.» But he can’t deny that something seems different now. He recently attended a meeting with the local police and learned that they have already begun installing cameras around Versailles, for the moment when Cubans gather there to celebrate the fall of Castroism. Several major media outlets, he says, have also begun reserving broadcast space to go live with the exile community’s reaction.
For decades, Cuban Americans reserved their votes for whoever promised a hard‑line stance against the Havana regime, but in recent years they seemed to have lost hope of reclaiming the island. The results of recent polls indicate that, in the 2024 elections, the Cuban community’s voting intentions reflected concerns that were more economic than political.
Even so, there were some who did not rule out the possibility that the new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, might draw on his identity as the son of Cuban migrants to turn his attention toward the island. After the Trump administration’s first year in which it n did little more than maintain the same hostile policy toward Havana, 2026 brought a different atmosphere for Cubans. After the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, the most common question was: is Cuba next?
Trump declared a national emergency over Cuba, restricted fuel shipments from Venezuela, and threatened to raise tariffs on goods from any country that supplies Cuba with oil. The consequences have been severe: hotels on the island are laying off tourists and workers; airlines such as LATAM, Air Canada, WestJet, and Transat suspended flights; the Spanish chain Meliá announced the closure of three of its hotels; transportation is nearly nonexistent, and life in general is at a standstill.
The country resembles a body with organ failure. In the midst of this situation, the Havana government has played one of its last cards: it has handed over to the private sector the responsibility of purchasing fuel abroad — something it had previously refused to do. This has particularly angered the exile community, given that many Cuban‑American businesspeople are offering to take part in these transactions.
«Ці самі бізнесмени багато років укладають угоди з військовим керівництвом, щоб мати змогу вести бізнес на Кубі, навіть якщо умова полягає у прийнятті системи, що позбавляє людей політичних, економічних та інших прав,» каже активістка Саломе Гарсія Бакальяо.
Although Washington’s specific plans for Havana are currently unknown, it has become clear that they are seeking change through economic opening — a policy that seems at odds with what many of the 2.5 million Cuban Americans and their representatives in Congress have been demanding for years.
Feelings in Miami are divided. For some, Rubio has now shown himself to be the politician few thought he would become. «Він був Кларк Кентом, а тепер він — Суперменом,» says José Manuel Hernández, Ingrid’s 37-year-old son. «Він показав мужність, навіть харизму. Я думаю, якщо він братиме участь у виборах 2028 року, він може перемогти. Без нього уряду США не було б інтересу до Куби.»
Others, however, have begun labeling the administration as «dialoguera» — the same term once used for U.S. president Barack Obama — after learning that Rubio may be holding conversations with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson, known as «El Cangrejo» (The Crab). They have also questioned the U.S. government’s intention to prioritize economic change over political liberation in Cuba.
Marco Rubio’s economic intentions
Sunilda Roque, 62, who works as a caregiver for the elderly, recently went to the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity with a bouquet of sunflowers and lit candles for the Virgin. «Я прийшла сюди помолитися за Кубу, за мій кубинський народ, який переживає так багато,» says she. She has lived alone in Miami for 13 years, far from her family on the island, who call her and tell her how many hours of power outages they endured each day, or how they managed to get food. «Я ніколи не бачив такого, навіть під час Особливої Періоду 1990‑х», she says.
Even so, Sunilda is one of the Cuban Americans who says: «Нехай станеться те, що має статися; інакше ми ніколи не будемо вільні. Жертва потрібна.» She fears, of course, what might happen to her family, but the years they’ve spent living in misery, with the little she can send them, weigh more heavily on her.
No one in Miami is indifferent to what’s happening in Cuba today. Some are counting down the days until the country collapses; others can’t believe it could happen yet. Some oppose intervention on the island, while others insist that «комунізм має бути знищений.»
Washington’s intentions, however, seem clear. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Rubio claimed that «Cuba’s fundamental problem is that it has no economy.» «It is important for the people of Cuba to have more freedom, not just political freedom but economic freedom,» he said, hinting at what both he and Trump have said before: that they do not intend to intervene militarily on the island, but rather «reach an agreement.»
Economist Ricardo Torres, a former researcher at the Center for Cuban Economic Studies and a professor at the American University in Washington, argues that, given the island’s current situation, «it’s natural to think that economic and political change go hand in hand.» While it’s still difficult to predict what kind of economic opening the U.S. government might implement, the economist points to priorities such as eliminating restrictions on the private sector on the island or enabling access to foreign capital — reforms promoted during Obama’s diplomatic thaw and heavily criticized by the more conservative sectors of the exile community.
«Then and now, any transformation aimed at achieving prosperity and development involves significantly expanding the private sector, perhaps under clearer rules, but there’s no way to avoid that component in a new Cuban economy,» says the expert. «The most important thing is that economic freedom or independence changes the relationship between the state and its citizens.»
«Miami’s passions cannot dictate policy toward Cuba»
At 3 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, Maribel left work and drove southwest to one of the offices of Cubamax — the travel and shipping agency to the island that has been in the crosshairs of several South Florida politicians. According to critics, businesses like this only help line the Cuban government’s pockets.
People are coming and going from the small shop. Some are carrying bags with baby bottles, medicine, and food. Maribel even sent a package to her daughter and three grandchildren. She can’t wait for the day when change in Cuba will mean she no longer has to spend her salary supporting her family. Some have chosen to stop sending phone top-ups or food to the island, but as long as the situation remains dire, she says she will always help her loved ones.
Cubamax, Katapulk Marketplace, and Maravana Cargo are all shipping agencies to Cuba that several Florida politicians have sought to shut down. Recently, Dariel Fernández, the Miami-Dade County tax collector, along with Cuban-American members of Congress, urged the Trump administration to suspend the licenses that allow the export of certain products to Cuba.
«Коли ми почали переглядати всі ці ліцензії, ми побачили неймовірні речі; деякі з цих компаній мають ліцензії на відвантаження розкішних автомобілів, Ferrari, Lamborghini, і навіть джакузі. Хто на Кубі має електрику, щоб працювати джакузі, хто має воду, і хто має гроші, щоб купити його, коли лікар на Кубі заробляє 20 доларів на місяць?» — запитує Fernández. «Ми не проти торгівлі на Кубі, але лише за умови свободи спочатку. Допоки цього не станеться, не можемо більше дозволяти американським компаніям користати від диктатури.»
Зі свого боку Радіко Ерреро, виконавчий директор Cuba Study Group, вважає, що, хоча флоридські політики традиційно застосовували максимальний тиск на острів, тепер «є адміністрація, яка прагне до зміни режиму в Кубі, але яка має зіштовхуватися з реаліями регіону та інтересами і національною безпекою Сполучених Штатів.» «Не в інтересах США спровокувати гуманітарний колапс у Кубі, ані посилати війська для стабілізації острова. Порива Маямі не можуть диктувати політику США щодо Куби, і це те, що розуміє Марко Рубіо у своїй позиції. Це можливість погодити відносини, які справді можуть бути стабільними.»
На перший погляд, Майамі здається тим самим старим місцем: продавці авокадо та слив на світлофорі, нічні клуби з кубинською музикою, перукарні, де чоловіки діляться життєвими історіями, та люди, що надіються виграти з лотерейними квитками. До цього додається колективна впевненість, що нависає над містом: що б не сталося в Кубі, то в тій чи іншій мірі це станеться з ними на цій стороні.
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28 лютого 2026 року, 06:26 за часом.
February 28, 2026 at 06:26AM
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