The Cuban writer Joaquín Baquero, the first biographer of the dancer Alicia Alonso and author of several books, was the victim of an apparent forced takeover of his apartment in the Náutico neighborhood, Playa municipality, Havana, according to the public complaint by the ICAIC art director Luis Lacosta.
Baquero, a man over 70 years old, blind and disabled, arrived at his home—where he has lived for decades—and found that the property had been broken into, the lock had been changed. Lacosta explained that the action was carried out on the orders of a citizen who has been living in the U.S. for over 20 years and claims to have rights over the property.
"Today, the writer Joaquín Baquero, who has published several books in Germany, a man over 70 years old, blind and disabled, arrived at his apartment in the Náutico neighborhood where he has lived for many years and found that his home had been violated, with the lock of the apartment changed. This was all done by a citizen who has lived in the United States for more than 20 years, claiming that he had the right to it," Lacosta wrote on his Facebook profile.
The whistleblower did not hide their indignation and warned: "We must be very careful, and now more than ever, we need the support of our laws."
The case was amplified by the journalist and political analyst José Manuel González Rubines, who described it as a "very serious issue" and framed it as a symptom of a structural problem affecting hundreds of families in Cuba.
"Beyond the details of the case and the people involved, the situation repeats itself hundreds of times in Cuba, where the regime stripped thousands of people of their properties after they left the country over the decades. My own family experienced this. Even photos, silverware, and decorations were taken," wrote González Rubines in his Facebook post.
The analyst pointed out, however, that the solution is not simple, because most of those who occupied the houses redistributed by the regime "were not figures connected to power, but low-income families," and that many current occupants are no longer the original beneficiaries of the allocation, but rather people who acquired the properties through buying or exchanging, "often at the expense of a lifetime of savings."
The question posed by González Rubines is difficult to answer: "How do we compensate those who were stripped of their property by an unjust act of the regime without making victims of those who currently occupy those homes, who bear no responsibility for that? And how can we compensate one group or the other if the Cuban state does not have (and will not have, at least in the short term) the resources to do so?"
The legal origin of this entanglement dates back to the early years of the dictatorship. The Urban Reform Law of October 14, 1960 reorganized urban property and abolished lease contracts. However, the law that finalized the dispossession was Law No. 989 of December 5, 1961, which mandated the nationalization through confiscation—without compensation—of all assets belonging to those who permanently left Cuba.
Decades later, the accumulated problem is colossal. There are at least 5,913 claims certified by the United States government with the Foreign Claims Commission, with an estimated value exceeding 9 billion dollars with interest, plus an additional 200,000 to 300,000 claims from Cuban Americans who were Cuban nationals when the expropriations occurred.
The Helms-Burton Act of 1996, whose Title III was fully activated in 2019, allows lawsuits against companies that operate with properties confiscated in Cuba.
Experts in asset recovery, however, have ruled out mass evictions in a potential Cuban transition, pointing to compensation and negotiated solutions as the most viable approach. However, the case of Baquero demonstrates that some claimants may be acting unilaterally and extrajudicially by taking possession of occupied homes without awaiting any legal process.
González Rubines did not shy away from the seriousness of the situation: "This is one of the many issues that the regime has left us as a ticking time bomb. Another task, complicated like the others, to address during the transition."
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