*Originally published in 2025 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered directly to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

In 2025, a multitude of internal and external factors have aligned, bringing the 66-year-old Cuban communist regime to its deepest crisis ever. What circumstances make the present emergency more ominous and potentially catastrophic than those of previous junctures? Which survival tools may no longer be available to President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other communist leaders? Since its establishment in 1959, the Cuban revolutionary regime has endured several moments of profound crisis which periodically have tested its survivability. Against all odds, it survived its vulnerable first three years (including the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and US trade embargo); the socioeconomic challenges surrounding the chaotic Mariel Boatlift in 1980; the deep political and economic debacle sparked by the withdrawal of Soviet economic and military support at the end of the Cold War (1991-); the ensuing so-called Special Period with concomitant social unrest in 1993-94; and Fidel Castro’s death in 2016. More recently, Cuba’s communist government managed to survive unprecedented mass street protests in July 2021.

As a Cuba specialist who spent over a decade researching and writing a book on the Cuban Revolution, I have learned several lessons. Ranking high among them is avoiding predictions about the demise of the Cuban regime. But I see Cuba’s current crisis as deeper, complexly multifaceted, and with fewer, if any, short-term avenues for improvement and survival. At the age of twenty, before I became a professional historian, when I saw TV news images and footage of the massive Mariel Boatlift of 1980, I naively believed that the 125,000-person exodus marked the beginning of the end of the Castro regime. While the boatlift was a blow to its international image (why would so many be so desperate to leave Paradise?) it actually strengthened the regime, pushing out tens of thousands of disaffected Cubans.

Then came the democratization wave of 1989-90. It began in Poland and soon thereafter communist regimes collapsed in Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Communist parties lost power in several other countries around the world from Angola and Mongolia to Yemen and Yugoslavia. And in 1992, the seemingly unshakeable bastion of communism, the Soviet Union, unraveled. Cuba certainly had to be next. How could its communist regime survive the collapse of its major benefactor and preferential trade partners?

It was 1989; I was in my late twenties, still in graduate school and believed that Cuba could not survive much longer. I commented to a visiting relative who resided on the island that “the regime would fall within a year.” Her reaction and response surprised me. She was visibly angry and said “How can you say that? We cannot withstand one more year!” Thirty-six years later, to the disbelief of most Cuba observers, the Communist Party is still in control. I was not alone. Scores of scholars, journalists, and pundits wrote and spoke about the imminent fall of communist Cuba. Renowned journalist Andrés Oppenheimer authored the book Castro’s Final Hour while exiled Cubans embraced Willy Chirino’s song, “Our Day (Is Coming Soon),” as their anthem. That was not Castro’s final hour and whatever was coming soon, never materialized.

Beating all odds, Cuba survived the so-called Special Period (1991-2000), its worst socioeconomic crisis since the Great Depression, by establishing draconian austerity measures and thanks to the flow of large amounts of exile remittances and foreign investments, as well as access to subsidized oil from the Hugo Chávez socialist regime of Venezuela. The massive exodus of balseros (rafters) of the 1990s and beyond also helped alleviate demographic pressures and avoid social unrest as manifested in the summer riots of 1993 and the larger “maleconazo” (seafront riot) the following year. The purge of several officers of the Interior Ministry and the Revolutionary Armed Forces—most notably General Arnaldo Ochoa, who was executed—further cemented the Castros’ hold on power.

Cuba’s economic recovery was painfully slow, never reaching pre-1991 levels. Disaffection persisted leading to the formation of numerous dissident organizations including civil rights groups like Oswaldo Payás’ Christian Liberation Movement, independent journalists’ associations, independent libraries and even clandestine political parties and labor unions. These and other opposition groups faced harsh repressive measures at the hands of the civilian so-called “Rapid Response Brigades” and state security apparatus.

For many, the Cuban regime and its leader, Fidel Castro, were one and the same, believing that Castro’s demise would result in the regime’s collapse, or at least profound transformations. Tired of listening to the same question again and again—“What will happen when Castro dies?”—in 2004, when I should have known better, I wrote the opinion column “The Day Castro Falls.” Half-seriously, half-tongue-in-cheek, I speculated that his younger brother Raúl would find it difficult to remain in power. I should have left it at that but went on to predict conflicts between military and civilian authorities including the Ministry of the Interior, and the formation of a stabilizing military junta.

Suffering from serious, debilitating illnesses, in 2006, at age 80, Fidel Castro came close to dying, which forced him to yield temporary control to his younger brother. Around that time, a TV journalist came to my office to interview me on what he believed was Castro’s impending death. Do not ask me why, but I obliged. Needless to say, the footage never aired. Castro lived another ten years, finally passing at age 90 in 2016. Neither his retirement from political office nor his death brought about confrontations between political and military authorities, much less civil war, nor regime change.

Equally peaceful and uneventful was the presidential transition from Raúl Castro to his finger-appointed successor, the obscure civilian Miguel Díaz-Canel, in 2018. He was 57 years old, born in 1960 like I was. The transition, however, is not complete as seven years later Castro has a hold on power largely because his influence over the military brass which he enriched when it transferred the lucrative management of most major businesses to high-ranking military officers. This is part of the new trend of oligarchic kleptocratic regimes (i.e., Russia and Venezuela). President Díaz-Canel, while counting on Raúl Castro’s implacable support, lacks the revolutionary credentials of the so-called historic generation of the Castros, Che Guevara, and other original rebels, fewer and fewer of whom are still alive. Moreover, Díaz-Canel comes out as arrogant, inefficient, and lacking empathy for the average Cuban. He also serves as a lightning rod for the people’s frustrations and anger, while the........

© E-International