Recolonizing Cuba: 1960s Property Claims Become a New Weapon
Jafari S Allen
Washington has accelerated a series of legal and military moves to reclaim assets nationalized since 1960, turning decades-old claims into a tool for the island’s recapture. In May alone the U.S. indicted Raúl Castro, deployed an aircraft carrier, and won a Supreme Court ruling that opens the door to unlimited claims. The process, rooted in pre-revolutionary racial inequality, is unfolding amid severe blackouts and military pressure.
In May alone, the United States made three notable moves against Cuba: it indicted former President Raúl Castro over the 1996 downing of exile-group aircraft, deployed an aircraft carrier to the Caribbean, and won a Supreme Court ruling backing claims for seized property. These steps are not random, however chaotic they may appear alongside other Trump administration policies.
Behind this convergence lie old mechanisms. The U.S. embargo, begun under President Eisenhower and tightened under Kennedy, has outlived most Cubans alive today. The 1996 Helms-Burton Act allows U.S. citizens to sue any company using property Cuba confiscated from Americans. The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission holds 5,913 certified claims worth $1.9 billion in principal and roughly $9 billion with interest, dating from the early 1960s. What is new is not the design but the speed: the process of dispossession and reclamation is accelerating.
That pace quickened especially after January 2026. On Jan 3, 2026, U.S. forces captured Venezuela’s president in a pre-dawn raid in Caracas and, during the same operation, killed 32 Cuban officers. The strike severed one of Cuba’s lifelines: Venezuelan oil. Mexico tried to fill the gap but within weeks stopped shipments when Washington threatened tariffs on any country supplying Cuba. By May, large parts of Havana endured blackouts of up to 20 hours a day.
“We are dying while still alive,” a Cuban television director said. The blockade does not bite evenly. Studies show that families without remittances from Miami or an elite awaiting the return of their property suffer less when the economy collapses and the grid goes down. Engineered famine creates its own politics, and the blockade generates demand for a “rescue.”
On May 20, Cuba’s Independence Day, the U.S. Justice Department indicted the 94-year-old Raúl Castro over the 1996 downing of two exile-group aircraft. The indictment targets a former head of state three decades after the event, and Washington chose the Freedom Tower in Miami to announce it: the symbol of the Cuban exile community since the 1960s.
The next day, the U.S. Supreme Court turned the recapture into law. In Havana Docks Corp. v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, eight justices upheld a ruling that cruise lines using Havana’s port from 2016 to 2019 trafficked in confiscated property. Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion; Justice Kagan dissented. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Kavanaugh, concurred but warned it could allow claims for unlimited sums from an unlimited number of claimants.
The pursuit of these claims has a racial structure from the start. Who owned property in Cuba in 1959? U.S. corporations and the Creole Cuban elite. By 1960, U.S. companies owned or controlled 90% of electric generation, the telephone system, most mining and sugar operations. The certified claims reflect the race-class structure of pre-revolution capital. Black Cubans, whose unfree and semi-free labor built the docks, mills, and ports now being litigated, have no certified claims over the property their work created.
The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group entered the Caribbean a day after the dock ruling, and days later the head of U.S. Southern Command met Cuban generals at Guantanamo Bay’s perimeter. The Caracas script is being executed. Cuba’s National Civil Defense General Staff is handing out family guides on how to respond to shelling. President Miguel Díaz-Canel has warned of a bloodbath with unforeseeable consequences. The island does not intend to be taken silently.
