The lawyer, political scientist, and former Bolivian minister Carlos Sánchez Berzain stated in an interview with Tania Costa that Cuba is going through the final phase of its dictatorship, a regime that, according to his analysis, has simultaneously lost four pillars that make its continuity impossible.
"We are living through the final days of the Cuban dictatorship, a dictatorship that has no people, a dictatorship that has no narrative, a dictatorship that has no economy, and that has no options," declared Sánchez Berzan, director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy based in Miami.
The analysis by the former Bolivian minister is based on a central premise: the Cuban regime has exhausted all its resources for governance. "It has run out of everything, it has no elements of governance, no possibility for the future, and is also under an ultimatum from the world's most important democracy, which is the United States," he stated.
Sánchez Berzain described the options that, in his opinion, Washington has put on the table. "I presume that these options range from the peaceful transfer of power, the search for some form of exile that guarantees impunity for the family and the criminal environment of the Castros and Díaz-Canel, to a forced recovery of the sovereignty of the Cuban people," he specified.
The second axis of his argument is the concept of hybrid warfare. According to Sánchez Berzain, Cuba has led an indirect offensive against the United States and the democracies of the hemisphere for decades, under the umbrella of 21st-century socialism.
"Hybrid warfare is the direct, but generally indirect, use of cohesion mechanisms to weaken society, to weaken a country, and to strip it of strength and internal cohesion," he explained.
Among the tools of this hybrid war, the analyst listed forced migration, drug trafficking, narco-terrorism, and human trafficking, among other mechanisms of regional destabilization.
The third axis is geopolitical. Sánchez Berzain argues that the arrival of Donald Trump to his second term activated what he calls the "Trump corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine.
"Any form of physical aggression, aggression through destabilization mechanisms, economic aggression, or any way in which a country in the Americas is attacked is an attack against the United States."
According to the analyst, this doctrinal framework makes Cuba a direct threat to U.S. national security and justifies the ongoing ultimatum.
The pressure on the regime is reflected in the economic data. The CEPAL projects a decline in the Cuban GDP of 6.5% in 2026, the worst contraction in Latin America, while the economist Pedro Monreal warns of a possible drop of up to 15%. Power outages exceed 24 hours a day in several provinces.
This is compounded by the collapse of Venezuelan support: the capture of Nicolás Maduro in January 2026 cut between 80% and 90% of the oil supply that Caracas was sending to the island, an accumulated flow of 63.8 billion dollars over the decades.
In that context, on May 1, 2026, the Trump Administration issued an ultimatum ordering foreign companies to detach from GAESA and the Cuban military apparatus before June 5. The Spanish hotel chains Meliá and Iberostar left Cuba to meet the deadline, and international tourism dropped by 55.8% between January and April 2026.
Under the accumulated pressure, Miguel Díaz-Canel announced on June 12 a package of 176 economic reform measures that include the opening of private banking and partial dollarization, without any political changes.
"All objective reality indicates that the moment for the end of the dictatorship in Cuba has come," concluded Sánchez Berzain.
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