They built success in the US. Now Havana wants them back

By Isabel Rosales, Jason Morris, CNN

(CNN) — Since 1959, when Fidel Castro seized power, Cubans on the island have endured navigating a system defined by scarcity, surveillance and state control. Today, that system is under a level of strain not seen perhaps since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, when the island lost its primary economic lifeline.

Now, as Havana calls on Cuban exiles to invest in the island, many in the United States are rejecting the offer outright, viewing it as a desperate move by a government under mounting pressure.

Earlier this week, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, Cuba’s deputy prime minister and minister for foreign trade and investment who is also a great-nephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro, said in a televised appearance that Cuban exiles are welcome to invest in the island.

It is not a new message. Havana has extended similar invitations to the diaspora for years, but those overtures have yielded few real-world results.

Among many in the Cuban diaspora in the US that CNN spoke with, the latest push is being met with skepticism. It’s viewed less as a substantive policy shift and more as a predictable move by a government struggling to maintain control.

The capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro by the US has effectively severed Cuba’s most critical oil pipeline, cutting off tens of thousands of barrels per day that once powered the island’s electricity grid and transportation systems, further worsening a decades-long energy crisis that has left Cubans grappling with chronic blackouts.

At the same time, Washington has escalated an aggressive pressure campaign by restricting fuel shipments, warning off foreign suppliers and creating what amounts to a de facto oil blockade that has choked off imports.

Together, the moment underscores a stark reality that the Cuban regime has rarely been more exposed to decisions made in Washington.

In Florida, exiles reject Havana’s invitation

Throngs of exiles have left their homeland over many decades in protest of Cuba’s communist-run government, and many hold a “deep patriotic conscience about why we left,” said Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, secretary general of the Assembly of Cuban Resistance, or ARC, a US-based Cuban opposition group focused on ending communist rule on the island.

“You will find that the overwhelming majority of Cuban entrepreneurs or business people are not going to go back and invest with a regime that hasn’t changed fundamentally,” he said.

Gutiérrez-Boronat said that since there is no “independent economy” in Cuba, and that everything is controlled by the state, it could be a “very dangerous place to invest in.”

“It’s a country that has no independent judiciary, and is a country where, over and over again, investors have seen that they have an issue with the state. They have no recourse to anyone else to appeal,” Gutiérrez-Boronat said.

Jorge Astorquiza, a Cuban-American chemist by trade and the co-owner of a Florida food production company founded in the 1970s, sees Havana’s latest outreach to entrepreneurs like him as a sign of desperation.

“They’re like a fish out of water, flopping around on the land in its death throes,” said Astorquiza, whose company Flayco Products in Tampa also exports its products.

“It knows it’s dying. It knows its days are numbered.”

Astorquiza told CNN his first reaction was to laugh at what he called the “absurdity” of the offer. To him, the moment echoes Perestroika, the economic restructuring effort led by Mikhail Gorbachev that was intended to stabilize the Soviet Union but ultimately accelerated its collapse in 1991.

“After forcing me to have to leave my own country, how can you ask me to go back there to gift you the fruits of my labor outside of where my business thrived?” he said, “That’s insane and I don’t support an investment in Cuba in any way. The only way I support investing there is with a free Cuba outside of the plight of communism.”

The Tampa businessman warns that beyond its politics, the lack of legal and property rights, regulatory constraints and crumbling infrastructure have led many a foreign investor in Cuba, over the past decades, to learn the lesson the hard way.

“In Cuba there’s no rights, no respect, no laws,” he said. “If you were investing in another country you would say, ‘well it’s a risk, but a calculated one.’ In the case of Cuba, the risk is a known loss. You are completely gifting Cuba your money and your work.”

In thriving Cuban business scene in Louisville there is no desire to return

Roughly 700 miles northwest, in Louisville, Kentucky, Cuban American Margarita Coro rejects any effort to normalize economic ties with Cuba’s communist government. Instead, she argues, pressure on the regime should intensify.

“The person who chooses to do business in Cuba, that’s for the benefit of the Castros and not anybody else. It will end with their business being seized by the regime,” she said.

Louisville is home to the largest Cuban population outside of Florida, according to the city’s economic development organization.

Coro immigrated to the United States nearly 30 years ago from Santa Fe, a neighborhood in Havana. She went on to work as a pastry chef in Las Vegas before settling in Louisville, where she built a family business, opening the Cuban bakery Sweet Havana and later expanding that legacy with her daughter’s café, Sweet Colada, in 2025.

Despite Cuba’s latest outreach to exiles, Coro says she has no interest in returning as an investor.

“So long as the Castros are there, there can be no business done in Cuba,” she told CNN.

“What the people need right now is freedom. I think we’re witnessing the end of this dictatorship and if this doesn’t happen now it won’t happen ever.”

Coro believes tightening the economic noose could help bring about that change. She supports more hardline measures, including a full ban on flights to Cuba and an end to remittances, a deeply divisive issue within the Cuban exile community.

Remittances, known as remesas, serve as a critical lifeline for many families on the island, allowing Cubans abroad to send money, food and medicine back home. Remittances can be sent via payment service providers or unofficially by Cubans visiting the island and carrying the cash and goods on hand. Coro argues that support comes at a cost.

“I understand the desire to help our own but whilst we help them, we open the mouth of the shark and feed it,” she said.

Another local favorite, Havana Rumba, was founded more than two decades ago by Marcos Lorenzo, who immigrated to Kentucky in 2000. What began as a single restaurant has grown into a four-location staple known for its authentic Cuban cuisine. But when it comes to investing back in the island, Lorenzo says that is the last thing he would do right now.

“I think people are crazy if they go to Cuba to invest,” Lorenzo, who grew up in Havana, told CNN. “It’s a horrible idea.”

He returns to Havana at least once a year to visit his 91-year-old mother and says she depends on the essential supplies he brings like food, medicine, clothing and money to survive.

Lorenzo, who last visited Cuba in early February, describes conditions on the island as the worst he has ever seen with hours-long blackouts, piling garbage and a lack of basic goods. He calls Havana’s infrastructure “fragile” and unpredictable, adding that for most Cubans, daily life has become a matter of survival.

“There is no rights, there is no freedom, so why would you go there?” Lorenzo asked. For him, any reconsideration would require “a huge change.”

He told CNN he supports more aggressive US action, even military intervention, to weaken the Cuban government, arguing it could create conditions for Cubans on the island to reclaim their freedom.

Any investment could run afoul of the embargo

Economic sanctions put in place by the US decades ago already block most commercial activity on the island involving Americans, creating significant legal barriers to any new investment.

“It’s pretty clear that whenever you have these kinds of pronouncements it takes two to tango,” Jordi Martinez-Cid, president of the Cuban American Bar Association, told CNN.

“It has to be legal on the Cuban side, and it has to be legal on the United States side,” he said. Martinez-Cid points to the Helms-Burden Act, as the most significant obstacle for any Cuban Americans considering investment. The 1996 law, signed by then-President Bill Clinton, codified the embargo into law, while also tightening sanctions against the island. It means only Congress can lift or significantly alter it.

He noted the law lays out clear conditions for normalization, including the unconditional release of political prisoners, the legalization of political parties, and a commitment to free and fair democratic elections.

“Cuba has had business dealings through many other countries, and there are many companies that do conduct business in Cuba, they don’t have the same legal and regulatory framework that we have,” Martinez-Cid said.

Even if Havana were to introduce reforms aimed specifically at attracting US-based investors, he said, major legal hurdles would remain on the American side.

Still, Martinez-Cid acknowledged the underlying appeal.

“It is in many ways a natural market to the US, it’s just 90 miles off of our coast. It is, in many ways, an untapped market. And so what (some) may see as challenges, I think others will see as opportunity for growth,” he said.

Patrick Oppmann contributed to this report from Havana, Cuba.

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