{"id":801163,"date":"2026-05-16T18:45:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T18:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/801163\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T18:45:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T18:45:30","slug":"who-controls-cubas-economy-what-to-know-about-gaesa-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/801163\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Controls Cuba\u2019s Economy? What to Know About GAESA."},"content":{"rendered":"

John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, visited Cuba on Thursday to demand major economic and security changes from its government. His visit came just as the Cuban government admitted that its oil reserves have run dry and coincides with efforts by federal prosecutors<\/a> to secure an indictment against Ra\u00fal Castro for drug trafficking and the 1996 downing of humanitarian planes.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order to expand Cuban sanctions to target GAESA. The <\/a>order says<\/a> the conglomerate\u2019s revenues \u201care likely more than three times the state\u2019s budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Marco Rubio ratcheted up the pressure, calling GAESA a tool of Cuba\u2019s political elite to repress the population while enriching themselves.<\/p>\n

GAESA \u201cis this private company that has more money than the government does,\u201d said Mr. Rubio during a trip to the Vatican last week. \u201cNone of this money goes to build a single road, a single bridge, provide a single grain of rice to a single Cuban other than the people that are part of GAESA.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sanction against this company that is stealing from the Cuban people to the benefit of a few,\u201d he said, before adding \u201cwe\u2019re going to be doing more.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel of Cuba decried the executive order as \u201ccoercive.\u201d<\/p>\n

GAESA was born out of desperation following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but its roots trace back to the 1980s. Ra\u00fal Castro, then the defense minister, convinced his older brother, President Fidel Castro, to allow him to make changes to the military\u2019s business interests, according to Frank Mora, who served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

When the U.S.S.R. fell, Cuba lost its largest trade partner and financial patron. The military was in shambles and struggled to pay its troops. Fidel allowed the military to take over state-run sectors of the economy, like tourism, in a bid to save the country.<\/p>\n

At first, the experiment worked, analysts say, and the military proved to be a more efficient business manager than other arms of the state. The economy <\/a>recovered by the late 1990s<\/a>, with the military reinvesting its profits into the country to support hospitals, education and government food rations.<\/p>\n

Some of what GAESA controls in Cuba <\/p>\n

Photos by Yamil Lage\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images, Todd Heisler\/The New York Times, Alexandre Meneghini\/Reuters.<\/p>\n

GAESA\u2019s control grew more dominant when Ra\u00fal took over the presidency from his brother Fidel in 2008. It now oversees many parts of the economy, big and small. GAESA also <\/a>has companies in Angola<\/a>, pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual profits from education, health care, construction and more.<\/p>\n

Critics say GAESA is now just another tool for the Castro family to consolidate its power.<\/p>\n

Today it is now more powerful than ever, yet <\/a>poverty on the island has never been worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe military has been the more pragmatic arm of the revolution, but that doesn\u2019t mean they embrace political liberalization,\u201d said Mr. Mora. \u201cThis is as much of an economic enterprise as a military institution,\u201d he added. \u201cSo they have less incentive to disturb the status quo, unless it’s beneficial to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

GAESA\u2019s finances are secret and do not appear anywhere in the government\u2019s budget, making it unclear whether the state receives any of its profits. When the government\u2019s comptroller admitted in a 2024 interview that she had no insights into GAESA\u2019s finances, <\/a>she was fired after 14 years of service<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Castro family has leveraged its authority over GAESA to maintain a firm grip on the broader Cuban economy. In 2011, shortly after becoming president, Ra\u00fal put his son-in-law, Gen. Alberto Rodr\u00edguez Lopez-Calleja, in charge of GAESA.<\/p>\n

After General Rodr\u00edguez died in 2022, a person unrelated to the Castro family was appointed to lead GAESA: Brig. Gen. Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, who was sanctioned by Washington this month. But the former GAESA chief\u2019s son and Ra\u00fal\u2019s grandson, Ra\u00fal Guillermo Rodr\u00edguez Castro, appears to have ties to Brigadier General Lastres, likely preserving the Castros\u2019 influence.<\/p>\n

Flight records show that in 2024 they flew together<\/a> on a private jet to Panama, where GAESA has registered multiple companies in order to evade U.S. sanctions, <\/a>according to an investigation<\/a> by a group of local media outlets.<\/p>\n

The younger Mr. Rodr\u00edguez Castro, known as el Cangrejo, Spanish for crab, <\/a>has emerged as a key player<\/a> in talks with Washington, meeting with Mr. Rubio\u2019s team earlier this year. Another Castro family member acting as a point man for those talks is <\/a>\u00d3scar P\u00e9rez-Oliva Fraga<\/a>, a grandnephew of the Castro brothers. He is currently Cuba\u2019s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign trade and foreign investment \u2014 an important pillar of the economy.<\/p>\n

The presence of two Castros at the negotiating table casts a long shadow of doubt on whether the regime is truly willing to surrender its economic monopoly as the Trump administration demands.<\/p>\n

While the Cuban government often blames Washington\u2019s sanctions and trade embargo for its financial woes, GAESA\u2019s investment strategies have also contributed to the island\u2019s economic demise, analysts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government complains about the embargo when it\u2019s convenient, but then they build these hotels as if there was no embargo,\u201d said Ricardo Torres, an economist at the American University in Washington who specializes in Cuba.<\/p>\n

After the 2015 deal between Cuba and the Obama administration restored diplomatic relations and eased travel restrictions, GAESA bet heavily on tourism, expecting an influx of Americans. At first the bet paid off and <\/a>Americans flocked to the island<\/a>. GAESA went on a spending spree: By 2025, it built 121 hotels, up from 56 a decade earlier, <\/a>adding 22,000 new rooms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the tourism boom was short-lived.<\/p>\n

In 2016, President Trump reimposed sanctions and <\/a>barred American tourists from visiting<\/a> the island. Cuba\u2019s economy faced another blow in 2020 when the pandemic ground tourism to a halt.<\/p>\n

Yet GAESA kept building hotels, even as it neglected other parts of the economy. Cuba\u2019s once-famous sugar cane industry \u2014 which financed the early days of the Communist revolution \u2014 <\/a>collapsed<\/a>, as government spending on the sector plummeted. Cuba has had to import sugar in recent years for domestic consumption, and even imports from the United States.<\/p>\n

Source: National Office of Statistics of and Information of Cuba. The New York Times<\/p>\n

According to the <\/a>latest government figures<\/a>, in 2024, Cuba spent nearly 40 percent of its budget on tourism and hospitality, or some $1.5 billion. Yet hotel occupancy rates that year hovered at a dismal 30 percent.<\/p>\n

The tourism budget was about 11 times that of education and health care combined in 2024. Spending on education decreased by 26 percent that year compared to 2023. That the government is spending more on tourism while Cubans go without basics shows how far the Communist revolution has devolved, observers say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Cuban constitution says that we, the people, are the owners of all the means of production,\u201d said Mr. Torres, the Cuban economist. \u201cBut there is no oversight into GAESA\u2019s finances or business decisions, there is no social control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, GAESA inaugurated the Iberostar luxury hotel in Cuba\u2019s tallest building. The five-star hotel towers over Havana\u2019s skyline of dilapidated homes. Yet some tourists say that the hotel is mostly empty when they visit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese military guys have profits that have been hoarded for a rainy day,\u201d said Ricardo Z\u00faniga, a former U.S. official who helped broker the Obama-era deal. \u201cWell, it\u2019s about as rainy as it gets in Cuba. So where is GAESA?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Iberostar luxury hotel in Havana\u2019s Vedado neighborhood opened in early 2025. Yamil Lage\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, visited Cuba on Thursday to demand major economic and security changes from its…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":800419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,326129,326131,57214,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,326130,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-801163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-castro","10":"tag-communist-party-of-cuba","11":"tag-cuba","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkcity","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-raul","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116585740780506124","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}