The Cuban lawyer, journalist, and political analyst Camilo Loret de Mola issued a stark warning this Friday regarding any potential transition in Cuba. “Nothing in Cuba is going to start well. No change in Cuba is going to start well. Any change in Cuba will be dramatic, it will be traumatic”, he asserted in an interview with Tania Costa, broadcast live coinciding with the official May Day parade of the regime in Havana.
Loret de Mola, a former lawyer for Duke Hernández, with 15 years of legal practice in Cuba and based in South Florida, stated that the Trump Administration must start from this premise as an essential point of analysis before any engagement with the island.
The analyst identified the central cause of pessimism as the absolute precariousness in which the Cuban population finds itself. "The population has nothing. The only thing Cubans have are expectations, expectations for change."
That gap between expectations and reality is, according to Loret de Mola, one of the greatest dangers of the process. For this reason, he warns that Cubans on the island live in a state of "self-compensation" disconnected from the facts. "When the Americans arrive, they believe that the soldier coming to the shores is bringing dollars or food or business, giving away businesses, something like that."
In the face of that illusion, the analyst described what he believes will be the beginning of the transition. "The first phase will be a terrible time for a impoverished country, where we need to start educating ourselves about what the real world is, the world where we have to work to produce, the world where the state stops being that entity you steal from to live."
That vision directly contradicts what Loret de Mola refers to as the "sweetened dream" of the Cuban exile. "This sweetened dream of many of my friends in exile of returning to Cuba to find the Cuba they left behind. That world exists only in their minds," he noted, in a message directed both at the diaspora and at those who believe they have ready-made solutions for reconstruction.
To illustrate the impossibility of confidently planning for a transition of that magnitude, Loret de Mola turned to military strategist Clausewitz: "One always prepares for yesterday's war. Tomorrow's war never knows how it comes." With this quote, he argued that no political or economic plan designed today will align with the reality that must be faced on the ground.
His words come in a context of extreme tension. The Cuban economy contracted by 5% in 2025 and has accumulated a decline of over 15% since 2020, while the CEPAL projects it to be the worst in Latin America by 2026. Negotiations between Trump and the regime, which include contacts with representatives of GAESA and Raúl Castro’s grandson, are at a standstill. And on April 24, Gerardo Hernández threatened with a guerrilla war in the event of a potential U.S. military occupation.
In that scenario, Loret de Mola also rejected the idea that someone has "the magic wand." "Cuba's solution has to be developed on the fly," he insisted, dismissing both the prescriptions from the exile community and promises of quick change. The Cuban opposition, for its part, demands the exclusion of the Castro family from any transition process.
"Nothing, nothing is going to turn out well from the start. Nothing, nothing can go well from the start because there’s no way to make it turn out well. We need to start building from the ground up," concluded the analyst, before issuing what he described as the only realistic call possible.
"It is a moment to tighten our belts, put on our boots, and go out to fight hard for the future of our children and grandchildren on the island."
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