The interim director of the Cuban Studies Institute at Florida International University (FIU), Sebastián Arcos, warned today in an interview with CiberCuba that the stagnation of the transition in Venezuela is a direct warning to Washington, sending the clear message that applying the same model in Cuba would leave the Castro regime practically intact.
"In Venezuela, we are not witnessing a transition, and I believe the evidence of the lack of transition in Venezuela is more than sufficient to send a message to Washington that that model in Cuba cannot be applied, because then we would be left with a regime very similar to the one we have today in power," Arcos stated to this platform.
The analyst points out that three months after the fall of Nicolás Maduro —captured by the United States on January 3, 2026— and after Delcy Rodríguez assumed the role of interim president, Venezuela remains in a state that he defines as semi-resolved.
Political prisoners —especially military personnel— remain incarcerated, democratically elected leaders are not in power, and the Amnesty Law that was passed is, in their words, "a farce that everyone knows is a farce."
Arcos attributes this stagnation to a decision made in Washington. "The pressure from the United States did not continue to impose a rapid transition to democracy; instead, they simply forgot about it and went to Iran because the issue was semi-resolved," he explained, acknowledging that he had predicted this outcome.
The concrete risk for Cuba, according to Arcos, is that the regime achieves exactly what it wants: a cosmetic opening that allows the flow of American tourists without changing the power structure. "Even if American tourists can go to the island, which is what they want to happen, that tourists go, not so much investors but tourists," he warned.
In light of that scenario, Arcos describes the profile that, in his opinion, could lead a genuine transition in Cuba: a career military officer—he cites a colonel with a heroic history in Angola as an example—who has no ties to political repression, who accepts the conditions set by Washington, and who leads a complete shift toward democracy.
"That person would be perfectly acceptable to the members of the opposition in Cuba, to the political prisoners who are in jail, and to the exiles," he stated, adding that, by belonging to the military establishment, they would also be acceptable to the regime's own structures and the Communist Party.
The analysis by Arcos comes at a time of intense diplomatic activity. On April 10, a U.S. delegation met in Havana with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Raúl Castro, marking the first visit of an official U.S. plane to the island since the Obama era.
According to Arcos, that delegation brought to the table the release of political prisoners, although he clarified that the demand does not encompass the more than 1,200 political prisoners that are estimated in total, a figure whose accuracy is not even confirmed.
The regime responded days earlier with a mass pardon on April 2 that released 2,010 inmates for common crimes, explicitly excluding those who committed offenses against authority —the category that the Castro regime uses to imprison dissidents—.
The Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been clear about the minimum demands. "In Cuba, two things need to change: the economy and politics, and we all know that if the politics doesn't change, the economy cannot change," a statement that Arcos cites as a reference for the threshold that Washington should not abandon.
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