An investigation by CiberCuba | Third of four installments
The first two installments of this research have revealed two things. The independent Cuban civil society has been contemplating for decades how a transition could take place and what should be done to govern it and rebuild the country.
There are proposals regarding referendums, negotiations, breakups, provisional governments, constitution, transitional justice, economy, infrastructure, health, education, security, and diaspora participation.
But that corpus, as extensive as it may be, does not yet constitute a Government.
The question that arises now is more uncomfortable: what is missing to turn that scattered knowledge into a recognizable, legitimized political alternative capable of exercising power if Cuba enters a governance crisis or a transition process?
And there is a second question that has so far remained in another realm of the debate. If Cuban-American entrepreneurs have publicly spoken about tens of billions of dollars available for a transitioning Cuba, could a portion of those resources —along with philanthropic, academic, and international funding— contribute to building the political, technical, and administrative capacities that are still lacking?
It is not about financing a party or designating a government for Cuba from Miami. The question is whether there is a middle ground between having hundreds of documents and having a real transition infrastructure.
The last mile
The problem that arises when organizing the corpus is quite specific.
There are lawyers who have worked on transitional laws. There are economists who have designed stabilization mechanisms. There are experts in energy, water, infrastructure, agriculture, health, and education. There are proposals for transitional justice and constitutional models. There are organizations that have studied various paths for change.
What does not exist, at least not in a visible and consolidated form, is a structure that brings together people, programs, authority, procedures, and executive capacity.
The difference may seem semantic, but it is not.
A document can outline how a provisional government should operate. That does not mean there is a team ready to take on each of its functions.
A roadmap can identify the priorities for electrical reconstruction. However, that does not mean there is a structure in place to hire, finance, supervise, and execute those projects.
A draft constitution may foresee a future separation of powers. However, that does not resolve who will keep the hospitals, customs, ports, or electrical grids functioning in the initial months.
The final mile of a transition is the step between knowing what needs to be done and being in a position to do it.
The problem of leadership
The fragmentation of the Cuban opposition is often portrayed as fundamentally a problem of ideological disagreements.
Our journey reveals something more complex.
There are real differences regarding negotiation or rupture, plebiscite or constituent assembly, pace of reforms, scope of transitional justice, economic model, and the role of the United States.
But there is also a significant volume of agreement on pluralist democracy, political freedoms, rule of law, competitive elections, judicial independence, and economic openness.
The problem is that these agreements have not translated into a common political authority.
The Liberation Agreement is perhaps the largest recent effort at coordination, bringing together more than 50 organizations around a sequence of liberation, stabilization, and democratization. CTDC, Cuba Próxima, Pasos de Cambio, and other platforms have developed various mechanisms for coordination.
But none of them can simply present themselves today as the political representation of all Cubans in favor of change.
The underlying question is not just who is right about the transition model. It is who would have the authority to decide when the different currents disagree during the transition.
Provisional Government: The Gap Between Paper and Reality
This is perhaps the clearest example.
The Cuban American Bar Association (CABA) has developed a project for the Fundamental Law of Transition; the Liberation Agreement proposes a provisional Government; Cuba Próxima outlines transitional legal structures; the CTDC proposes a minimal agenda and mechanisms for legitimization.
But there remains an essential difference between institutional design and political capacity.
Who appoints that Government? Who determines its competencies? Who can recognize it? Who resolves internal disputes? How much time does it have? Who controls its decisions? Who can dismiss those who fail to comply with the provisional mandate?
These are questions that cannot be resolved by amassing more documents. They require political legitimacy, selection mechanisms, and a structure capable of imposing rules accepted by the participants.
The issue of security forces
The same gap appears, even more noticeably, in the field of security.
Several proposals establish the subordination of the Armed Forces and security bodies to civilian authorities, and the Liberation Agreement includes a specific commission on security, defense, and public order.
But the operational question is much more difficult.
In a real transition, someone will have to temporarily take control
- the armed forces
- the police
- the borders
- the correctional facilities
- the strategic infrastructures
- intelligence services
- and the weapons depots.
It is not enough to declare subordination to civil power. It is necessary to know who exercises that civil power and with what authority.
At this point, the body of proposals is less developed than in constitutional or economic matters. It is also one of the areas where a rapid change could pose the greatest risks.
Property: the other great political problem
A similar thing happens with property.
The main proposals advocate for property rights and a private economy. However, in Cuba, the transition would have to address an exceptionally complex property situation: state assets, GAESA enterprises, confiscated properties, claims from former owners, and new businesses established under the current framework.
The roadmap of the Cuban American National Foundation (FNCA) aims to promote an economy of Cuban owners and protect shareholders. Cuba Próxima proposes regulations regarding business and commerce. CEC and other centers have worked for years on property, expropriations, and economic reconstruction.
But there is still no political consensus on how to turn those principles into a general mechanism for restitution, compensation, recognition, or resolution of property conflicts.
The issue may directly affect the legitimacy of the process.
Money exists as an expectation. And what about the architecture to use it?
Here arises one of the issues that have emerged strongly in 2026.
Jorge Mas Santos has spoken about between 35,000 and 45,000 million dollars that could come in the form of capital during the early years of a transformation. In May, while discussing the cost of reconstruction, he raised the range to 40,000 - 80,000 million and asserted that accessing these amounts would not be the main obstacle if appropriate legal conditions existed.
At the end of May, Roberto Fernández-Rizo told CiberCuba that exile entrepreneurs had committed 35 billion dollars to invest in the first year following a democratic transition, and that this willingness would be contingent upon legal security, democracy, and elections.
They are related figures, but not equivalent. One thing is an estimate of potential capital, another is a forecast of reconstruction needs, and a third is a presumed investment commitment attributed to entrepreneurs. There is, at least publicly, insufficient evidence to treat them as money that has already been deposited and is available.
The most interesting question is another one.
Even if capital is available, it requires an architecture capable of absorbing it.
Who manages the funds of a transition?
Let's imagine for a moment that Cuba enters a phase of stabilization and billions of dollars arrive for electricity, food, medicine, water, housing, and transportation.
Who receives those funds? Who sets the priorities? Who signs the contracts? Who audits the purchases? Who decides which projects are urgent? Who is accountable to the donors, investors, and citizens? Who fights against corruption?
The reconstruction of a country depends not only on having capital but also on state capability: institutions, professionals, and management mechanisms capable of transforming those resources into electricity, water, food, hospitals, housing, and infrastructure, with controls that reduce corruption and hold decision-makers accountable.
Therefore, preparation for the transition may require something that has so far received much less attention than the large investment figures: preparing in advance the people and structures that will manage those resources.
Capital as a Possible Driver of Transition Architecture
Here appears a hypothesis that arises naturally from the analyzed corpus.
If Cuban-American entrepreneurs are proposing to mobilize large amounts of capital for a future Cuba, would it make sense for a portion of that effort to be directed first towards building transitional capacity?
Not necessarily funding specific political organizations.
It could be about financing:
- legal and constitutional teams;
- groups of economic policy;
- training of public administrators;
- sector experts
- coordination mechanisms between organizations;
- preparation of plans for the first 100 or 180 days;
- audit and transparency systems;
- databases of Cuban professionals both on and off the island;
- formation of energy, water, health, education, and agriculture teams;
- preparation of negotiators to engage with governments and multilateral organizations.
The idea would be to convert the accumulated knowledge into institutional capacity. In other words, to create a kind of transitional infrastructure before the transition actually occurs.
A "shadow government" in Cuba?
The expression can be problematic in the Cuban case if interpreted as a self-proclaimed government from abroad.
But there is a more plausible alternative: a national transition platform, inclusive and transparent, that does not aim to replace the legitimacy of future elections, but is indeed capable of presenting a program, identifying teams, and preparing decisions.
It could bring together opposition organizations, civil society, legal experts, economists, businesspeople, academics, and representatives of the diaspora.
Its role should not be to govern in advance, but to be prepared to govern if a provisional authority were to become necessary.
The model may resemble more of a "preparatory cabinet" than a parallel government. The difference is significant: such a structure would not need to claim sovereignty. It would have to prepare to receive legitimacy when the right moment arrived.
Legitimacy is the central issue
Here lies the primary risk of any project of this nature.
If the platform were created, funded, or mainly directed by entrepreneurs from the exile community, it could be perceived within Cuba as an external economic elite making decisions for the citizens.
If it were exclusively controlled by existing opposition organizations, it could reproduce the fragmentation it aims to overcome. If it depended too much on the United States, it could be questioned on grounds of national sovereignty. If it lacked resources, it might end up like another set of documents in a file.
Therefore, any transitional architecture would have to simultaneously address representativeness, transparency, autonomy, and technical capacity.
There is no obvious formula for doing it. However, it also doesn't seem reasonable to assume that the problem will resolve itself spontaneously when the crisis arrives.
A question that is beginning to emerge
The first two installments of this research show that there is a broad corpus on the scenarios of change and on the management of a transition.
This third one allows for a different conclusion to be drawn.
Cuba does not seem to need another large collection of documents to demonstrate that ideas exist. It needs mechanisms to transform those ideas into a recognizable political and administrative capacity.
That involves people, organization, resources, coordination, and legitimacy.
And capital is one of those variables.
We do not know if the figures mentioned by Jorge Mas and other representatives of the Cuban-American business community will ultimately become formal commitments, let alone if they would be sufficient to finance a transformation of the scale that Cuba is facing.
But there is a legitimate question that has received much less attention so far:
If there is a business sector willing to invest large sums of money in the future Cuba, why not also consider investing a portion of those resources in preparing the political, administrative, and technical capacity that will need to govern that future Cuba?
The answer cannot simply be to create another opposition group.
It should be something more ambitious: to transform the corpus of proposals accumulated over decades into a plural platform, with faces, responsibilities, teams, and a minimum transition program that Cubans can recognize as a viable alternative for governance.
Capital alone cannot confer legitimacy. But without resources, legitimacy is also insufficient to build governance capacity.
The fourth and final installment will examine the other piece of the puzzle: what role states, international organizations, universities, foundations, and human rights organizations are already playing in this preparation, what foreign experiences may be useful, and what kind of external support a Cuban transition would need without undermining the political agency of the Cubans themselves.
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