SerpApi.Org
MIAMI—Scattered across South Florida and tucked inside bank vaults, safes and family desk drawers are the yellowing deeds to sugar mills, oil refineries and family homes seized by Cuba’s Communist government more than six decades ago.
For generations, these documents were little more than family heirlooms that served as painful reminders of fortunes lost after the revolution led by Fidel Castro’s bearded guerrillas.
Now they suddenly have potential monetary value, as the Trump administration intensifies its squeeze on Cuba’s government.
Since 2019, people and companies with claims on property seized in Cuba have been able to sue businesses they say profited from those expropriated assets, with a list of defendants in federal court that includes U.S. companies such as Expedia and Royal Caribbean. The Trump administration’s squeeze on Cuba has accelerated the filing of these lawsuits, as Cuban exiles see a real chance of U.S. pressure forcing change on the island.
“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing,” said Andrés Rivero, a Miami-based attorney dealing with stacks of these claims.
Alongside the American fuel blockade and a near-total economic embargo against Havana, these claims have become one of Washington’s most potent pressure points against Cuba’s Communist leaders because it escalates costs and risks for foreign investors operating on the island.
In one high-profile case in federal court in Miami, Rivero won a $29.85 million jury verdict against Expedia for client Mario Echevarría, whose family once owned Cayo Coco, a 143-square mile island off the northern coast of Cuba now developed into a tourist hub. Rivero argued Expedia allowed Americans to book hotel rooms on his client’s stolen land.
The federal district judge threw out the verdict, a decision Rivero is appealing. Expedia declined to comment.
Another case against American Airlines, for a client claiming ownership of Havana’s international airport, settled out of court. “We’re pleased to have resolved this matter earlier this year,” an American Airlines company spokesman said. “American is proud to operate 11 daily flights to six destinations in Cuba.”
The cases stem from the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. Successive American administrations suspended the provision allowing property-rights lawsuits, but that changed with the first Trump administration in 2019. Now those cases are gaining traction.
The lawsuits also have diplomatic ramifications. Helms-Burton requires that these claims be on the road to resolution before the U.S. and Cuba can resume normal diplomatic relations.
Feeling the U.S. squeeze, Cuba’s government has signaled a willingness to discuss how to compensate the owners of expropriated property, in the hope that they agree to invest capital in the island first. Instead of returning full land ownership, Havana is proposing 99-year concessions for surface property rights while the state retains the land underneath. It’s an arrangement that falls short of historical justice, said attorneys for the aggrieved owners.
Winning a judgment in Miami federal court doesn’t mean that dispossessed families will get their assets back. The U.S. can penalize corporations on U.S. soil, but it can’t force Cuba to return seized properties. American Airlines flights continue to land at Havana’s airport, and Echevarría has yet to set foot on Cayo Coco.
Washington also has leverage. Foreign businesses are fleeing Cuba after the U.S. imposed more sanctions on Cuba. International hotel chains have surrendered their operations, and the dwindling tourism industry has denied the insolvent government an essential revenue source.
The increased pressure forced Canadian mining company Sherritt International to pause operations at a nickel and cobalt mine in Cuba earlier this year.
Cuba’s government seized the mine from an American company after the revolution. It is one of almost 6,000 certified U.S. claims, a list that represents the largest confiscation of American property in U.S. history, worth $1.9 billion at the time of seizure in the 1960s, about $20 billion in today’s dollars.
“Cuba has realized that they will not get any investment from the U.S., and will not get any political legitimacy from the U.S., unless they take the property issues seriously,” said Sebastián Arcos, director of the Institute for Cuban Studies at Florida International University.
Recent Supreme Court rulings have also expanded the scope of the Helms-Burton law. One landmark decision allowed Exxon to pursue claims that it owned refineries and gas stations seized by Cuba’s government, rejecting a sovereign-immunity defense by Cuba’s state-run conglomerate CIMEX. Exxon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
A second decision revived a lawsuit against major cruise lines—including Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian and MSC—that used docks in Cuba that the government seized from an American company. “While we’re disappointed with last month’s ruling…We believe strongly in our position and look forward to continuing the appeal,” a Carnival spokeswoman said. Norwegian and MSC didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Re-establishing ownership goes beyond any court case. Cuban-Americans seeking their old properties often find the buildings in decay.
“The critical issue here to remember is that Cuba is bankrupt,” said Pedro Freyre, chair of international practice at Akerman, a U.S. law firm. “The Cuban infrastructure looks like it’s been through a war or a hurricane. It’s destroyed, dilapidated.”
For families holding on to decades-old deeds, the physical assets left on the island are often unrecognizable. Freyre recalled a recent call from a woman asking if she could reclaim her father’s old hardware store.
“You think you’re going to go there and the hammers and the screwdrivers will still be hanging on the wall?” he asked her. “If you tell me: ‘my family had a sugar mill,’ chances are all you’re going to get is chunks of rusted iron in an abandoned field.”
Even if the property still stands, there is the possibility that it has been owned by multiple Cuban households over the decades, a long chain of custody that entangles original ownership.
“Grand homes were simply apportioned room by room to different families,” said Arcos of the Institute for Cuban Studies. “They sometimes had to share a bathroom.”
Title III of Helms-Burton contains a 1996 cutoff. Under current court rulings, an heir who inherited a property after that date is generally barred from suing under the law.
Even if that hurdle is met, more than 60 years of exile means the original property owners are largely gone, leaving behind multigenerational family trees sometimes across the globe.
Freyre’s family once owned a four-building residential compound in Havana’s upscale Miramar neighborhood. Seized after the revolution, it became an office for the Agriculture Ministry. He describes his modern family tree as a sprawling “tribe,” counting 16 nephews and 42 great-nephews.
“You have to go through the whole shebang of who owns what,” said Freyre, adding that many of the family members who originally owned the property have died and the living heirs are three generations removed.
Faced with such roadblocks, some of the Cuban diaspora have given up on the idea of ever reclaiming properties. Arcos is one of them. His grandfather’s tannery was seized after the revolution, just after it was built. A year later, he fled to the U.S., crossing the border from Mexico hiding in the trunk of a car. The property is now an empty warehouse.
“What they did with the tannery is exactly what they’ve done with the entire country,” said Arcos. “They confiscate everything, they suddenly become rich and then they run it to the ground.”
Write to Deborah Acosta at [email protected]
