古巴经济濒临崩溃，市场改革与投资前景引争议

Westin: This is a story about hope triumphing over experience. Once again, the Cuban economy appears to be on the brink of collapse in the face of tightening U.S. economic sanctions. This time without the potential for help from the Soviet Union or Venezuela. -If we're not investing in Cuba, it would be a loss. No, the only way I'd live in Cuba is if the Cuban system collapses and Cuba becomes a democracy. That's the only way I could live in Cuba.

When communism falls, I would return to Cuba. Westin: The section of Miami known as Little Havana is home to over half of Cuban-Americans whose families fled the Castro revolution nearly 70 years ago. And even as Havana, 200 miles to their south, struggles, many remain hopeful that things can and must change. -Cuba's in a lot of trouble, because unfortunately for them, it's run by a bunch of incompetent communists. Being a communist is bad, being an incompetent communist is, like, the worst.

Westin: Before the revolution in 1959, Cuba had the third largest GDP per capita in Latin America. Today, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean estimates that the country has the lowest nominal GDP per capita in the region. -Because of the U.S. sanctions, they've just been starved of finance for so long. I think every sector, pretty much every sector, is open to investment. Westin: Emily Morris is a research fellow at University College London.

Westin: There's a lot of uncertainty about Cuba right now. I won't ask you to predict what will happen, but give me a range of scenarios that might happen. -OK, well, the first scenario is, I suppose, the intended scenario for the actions that have been taken by the U.S. It creates such a lot of hardship that somehow the population turns against their government or the government is forced to resign, and then you have a change of regime and you have a new political system, and then you have the restoration of capitalism.

The second scenario is that the U.S. continues to create more and more hardship and the situation just gets worse and worse in Cuba. The third scenario is if you went in and took out either the president or Raul Castro, who's 95, and then somebody else would step in. And then the fourth scenario is what, you know, they refer to as, you know, greater military action, which would be to ramp up the pressure by using U.S. military to damage infrastructure and all the rest of it.

Again, unlikely to achieve the objectives. Westin: Some who hope for change in the Cuban economy point to President Díaz-Canel's proposed reforms. In the non-state sector, the list of prohibited activities will be narrowed. There is also a set of regulations to encourage foreign direct investment. They concern the right of superficies, removing obstacles, the use of bank accounts, and foreign direct investment approval timelines.

Westin: In June, Cuban lawmakers passed 176 sweeping free market reforms, including the expansion of foreign and private investment, the decentralization of Cuba's economy, and liberalization of factors such as tourism, banking, property, and agriculture. -We've had this statement by the Cubans, which is an interesting one, and I think we should, you know, take it seriously. But this is an acceleration. It's much more explicit, and it's an invitation to Cuban Americans to invest in Cuba.

It includes privatizations, a wider opening to foreign investment, and the actual withdrawal of the government from central planning system. In this very difficult context in 2026, the balance seems to have tipped in favor of those who favor market reforms. But they have a credibility problem. Westin: Pavel Vidal is a professor at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Cali, Colombia. He is Cuban-born and worked at Cuba's central bank and the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy until he left the country in 2012.

We need to see how they move forward with these reforms to effectively demonstrate that these aren't temporary reforms, mere cosmetic changes or announcements, but that they are genuinely willing to change the ownership structure, the mechanisms of the economy, and that the state will withdraw from the economy, giving more room to domestic and foreign capital. Westin: But where some see the promise of the announced reforms, others are deeply skeptical.

Particularly some Cuban-American investors eager to return to investing in their home country. -They are afraid, as a communist dictatorship, of the entrepreneurial class having actually freedom and actually having, essentially, an opposition that can challenge their government. Westin: Andro Nodarse-Leon is a Cuban-American hotelier whose LionGrove has substantial real estate investments in the United States. -They're never going to allow for any meaningful amount of private market activity.

They're completely lying, you know, and it's a farce, you know, these steps that they're taking with these supposed reforms. They're doing it to buy time. They're doing it because they're trying to run out the clock on the Trump administration and the efforts of President Trump and Secretary Marco Rubio. That's what they're playing for. The Cuban people know it. -We just want them to be a nicely-run country. We're going to let our people go back and let them invest in Cuba if they'd like.

Westin: Essential to President Trump's plans to open Cuba up to U.S. investment are the heavy sanctions he has imposed, sanctions that have hit the Cuban economy hard, including one of the most promising sectors, tourism. Since May, hotel groups including Melia, Iberostar, Blue Diamond and Archipelago International have either pulled the plug or curtailed operations. And the number of visits last year were down 62 percent from the country's peak in 2018, the lowest in 20 years other than during the COVID-19 pandemic. -The offering of services in Cuba is obviously significantly limited by how broken that economy is.

And so for many years now, the tourism market in Cuba, you know, was not a market that had five-star properties. I mean, upper-upscale luxury was not really something that you saw in a significant way in Cuba. It was a lower-rated market. The good thing is that there is a significant amount of existing properties there, existing assets and existing infrastructure within the tourism industry. I think it requires firms like ours going and acquiring those properties, reinvesting and reimagining and upgrading those properties, and also bringing the operating conditions of those properties to a world-class scale.

And so that's the lens through which we're looking at investing in Cuba. Surely there will also be the development of brand-new resorts. I think there will be an opportunity for the development of branded residential product, right, which often is joined together with resorts or other types of hospitality properties. And so we think the future is very bright in that sector, without a doubt, and it's a very important pillar of the economic recovery of the island.

Tourism seems to be a sector, at least initially, that can generate opportunities, especially if travel restrictions for US citizens are eased. They could provide the natural market for a boom in visitor arrivals, as happened, for example, with the easing of sanctions and travel restrictions during the Obama administration. Westin: Vidal says at this point the Cuban government isn't looking to places like Mexico or Chile to inform its economic policies.

It most often cites Vietnam or even China. As Cuba seeks to rebuild its economy, are there lessons it can learn from other Latin American countries? Yes, well, normally the models the Cuban government tends to look to are Vietnam and China, especially since they are making economic changes and so far have not mentioned political changes. So that transformation model, where there are economic changes without political changes, well, that's their preference.

I'm not saying that's the model tha