Cuban-American businessman Iván Herrera, founder and CEO of Univista Insurance, published a video this Friday in which he firmly rejects the 176 economic measures announced by the Cuban regime on Thursday, June 18, describing them as delayed, insufficient, and forcibly elicited by pressure from Washington. He also warned that as long as the communists remain in power, he will not invest a single cent in Cuba.
"I believe these measures are arriving too late. It is a lack of respect. It is outrageous that at this stage they are taking these steps that are not voluntary at all. They are compelled by the pressure that our Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and President Donald Trump are exerting on the leadership of the Cuban dictatorship," Herrera stated in the video.
The businessman, born in Alquízar, Artemisa, in 1973, lamented that the regime had not made these decisions decades ago. "How beautiful it would have been if they had done it 30 years ago. I wouldn't have had to emigrate. We would have avoided many deaths."
Herrera reviewed in the video the historical opportunities that the regime wasted for reform: the exoduses from Camarioca and Mariel, the death of Fidel Castro, and the protests of July 11, 2021, when the dictatorship chose to repress instead of opening up. "They chose to give it to the Chinese, they chose exploitation, they chose to mistreat that people, humiliating them, they created the UMAP, they did everything they did," he denounced.
In response to any call to invest in the island, the businessman was unequivocal: "At least for me, as long as you are there, I won't put a single cent of my investment there. It doesn't matter who speaks with me, it doesn't matter what you want to do to clean up your image."
Herrera also accused the leaders of the regime of having "their hands, their bodies, their feet, their faces smeared with the blood of the Cuban people" and demanded that they relinquish power: "Get out of there," he said directly to them.
Instead of seeking external or diaspora capital, the businessman proposed that the regime grant power directly to those who work the land. "People my age, the peasants from my region, from Alquízar, from Güira, from San Antonio de los Baños, want to plow their land but can’t because of you," he pointed out.
Herrera also denounced that the regime has its own resources that it does not use for the people. "Those people who are there should take the 18 billion, the one that was discovered, because you have more than 500 billion dollars scattered in the banks. Go to where those farmers are and hand over the power to them."
Herrera's rejection of the measures comes at a time of deep skepticism. Following the announcement of the reform package — the largest since the Special Period, which for the first time since 1959 includes the authorization of private banking and currency exchange— the informal market reacted with an additional depreciation of the peso: the dollar soared to 690 CUP this Friday.
This is not the first time Herrera has adopted this stance. In March 2026, he already declared that there will be no business investment in Cuba until Cubans are free, and that same month he traveled to Washington to seek support from the Trump administration before Congress.
The businessman ended his message with a warning to the regime and a promise to the Cuban people: “Freedom is coming to Cuba, and it will come soon, because you do not know how to produce. You know how to steal what others produce. Get out of there and let us take over, so you can see a happy people, a prosperous people, a people with education, with schools, with hospitals, with everything,” he concluded.
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