Finally, Cuba treated as a dictatorship

OPINION:

From South Florida, Cuba is only 90 miles away. I have lived most of my life in the land of the free, yet I’ve never escaped the sound of my homeland struggling to breathe. That narrow stretch of water between us has become one of the cruelest distances on earth — not because it is wide but because it separates freedom from submission, possibility from stagnation.

I left Cuba as a child. Like many other exiles, I grew up building a life in America while watching the island remain frozen in time. Sixty-seven years have passed since the revolution promised dignity and justice. Instead, it delivered repression, economic decay and a slow erosion of the human spirit. Generations have been raised knowing scarcity as normal, obedience as survival and silence as protection.

What pains me most is not just Cuba’s suffering but also how familiar the world has become with it. The island’s hardship is no longer shocking; it is managed, rationalized and periodically excused. Well-intentioned policies of engagement and accommodation have treated the regime as something to be moderated rather than confronted. In doing so, they have prolonged the life of a system that survives not through reform but through endurance.

The suffering is real and daily. It is found in empty pharmacies, unreliable electricity, wages that cannot sustain a family, and young people whose dreams consist only of escape. It is visible in artists who self-censor, in professionals who abandon their fields, and in families divided by exile and fear. These are not temporary conditions. They are structural features of a system that has never been held accountable.

From exile, watching this slow suffocation creates a moral dilemma. No one wants to see their people suffer. No one wishes hardship upon relatives, neighbors or strangers who share a common history. Yet after nearly seven decades, it becomes impossible to ignore a painful truth: Keeping Cuba alive in its current form may be the cruelty. Every economic lifeline sent without conditions sustains the same political machinery that caused the crisis in the first place.

Systems that cannot reform eventually break.

For most of my life, U.S. policy toward Cuba sought to soften the regime in hopes that gradual change would follow. It never did. Concessions were absorbed, not reciprocated. Resources were redirected upward, not outward. The promise that engagement would empower civil society proved illusory in a state designed to suppress it.

This is why the approach taken by the Trump administration marks a sharp and necessary departure. For the first time in decades, the Cuban regime is treated not as a misunderstood partner but as a dictatorship responsible for its own failures. The premise is simple: Subsidizing repression is not compassion. Pressure, not indulgence, exposes the fragility of authoritarian systems that rely on external support to survive.

This is not about punishment for its own sake. It is about refusing to perpetuate a lie: that Cuba’s misery is inevitable or, worse, defensible. When the flow of resources slows, the regime’s narrative weakens. When illusions fade, accountability becomes unavoidable.

The metaphor that comes to mind is suffocation. Anyone who has held their breath underwater knows that there comes a moment when endurance ends and truth asserts itself. The struggle is frightening, but the alternative — remaining submerged indefinitely — is worse. Cuba today feels suspended in that moment, hovering between collapse and continuation, forced to confront the consequences of a system that has exhausted all excuses.

Allowing that system to finally fail does not mean abandoning the Cuban people. On the contrary, it means believing they are capable of more than permanent dependency. Collapse is not the end of a nation; it is the end of a structure. History shows that societies often discover their courage and creativity only when the old order loses its grip.

Cuba’s culture, humor, music and resilience have survived despite decades of repression. The Cuban spirit has endured prisons, exile and scarcity. It deserves the chance to breathe freely, without intermediaries or ideological guardians.

As someone who left the island as a child and has spent a lifetime watching its decline from exile, I do not write these words lightly. They come from grief, frustration and an enduring love for a country that deserves better than managed decay. Perhaps only when the current system finally exhales its last breath will Cuba be able to draw its first honest breath of freedom.

• Carlos L. Valdes is a retired businessman, former state legislator (1988-2000) and Cuban American who believes in confronting tyranny with clarity and conscience.