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The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, appeared this Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to defend the Department of State's budget for fiscal year 2027 and offered a strong diagnosis regarding Cuba: the country cannot reform while the same people remain in power.
«I truly do not believe that this system is capable of reforming itself unless new people take control,» Rubio stated before the senators, marking a significant hardening of his stance compared to previous weeks.
The Secretary of State focused his analysis on GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A.), the business conglomerate of the Cuban Armed Forces, which he described as the true power behind the island.
«Cuba is not actually controlled by the government. Cuba is controlled by a military holding company called GAESA, and GAESA owns practically everything in the country. It controls the tourism sector, it controls mining, it controls the gas stations; it owns it all. Approximately 70% of Cuba's GDP is under the control of this military company,» he stated.
Rubio emphasized that GAESA accumulates between 14 billion and 17 billion dollars in assets, without a single cent of that money reaching the Cuban public treasury.
"There are people literally starving. There are people literally suffering the consequences of an electric grid that hasn't been maintained in ten years. However, this military holding company is sitting on all those assets," he denounced.
The secretary described Cuba as a failed state that poses a direct threat to the United States and emphasized that the island requires "systemic and serious reforms," but dismissed the notion that the current leadership is capable of implementing them.
This position contrasts with the one Rubio held on May 27 during a cabinet meeting at the White House, when he kept the door open for dialogue: "We will be talking to them, we will be working on it. We want something good for the Cuban people."
In that same session, Rubio had already described the regime as "incompetent communists" and pointed to GAESA as the main structural problem of the island.
During the hearing this Tuesday, Rubio also accused Cuba of sponsoring terrorism and of having supported virtually all leftist violent groups in the Western Hemisphere, explicitly mentioning the ELN and FARC.
Additionally, he warned about the presence on the island of espionage facilities operated on behalf of China and Russia, capable of intercepting military and civilian communications from the southeastern United States.
The statements come at a time of intense pressure on Havana: since January 2026, the Trump administration has imposed more than 240 sanctions against the Cuban regime, including direct measures against GAESA and its president, Brigadier General Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera.
The United States has also intercepted at least seven tankers in international waters, which has decreased Cuba's fuel imports by between 80% and 90%, exacerbating an energy crisis that in 2026 has left much of the territory experiencing blackouts of up to 24 hours a day.
The deadline for foreign companies to terminate their operations with GAESA under the threat of secondary sanctions is next Friday, June 5, which adds a sense of urgency to the diplomatic context surrounding the hearing held this Tuesday.
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