A question that has remained unanswered for decades is coming back to the forefront of the debate on the future of Cuba: who truly benefits from the unresolved Cuban issue? That is the question that frames Tania Costa's interview for CiberCuba with Gustavo Marín Duarte, a Cuban exile, founder of the Agrupación Abdala, and one of the most representative voices of anti-communist and anti-imperialist nationalism in the historical exile community.
Marín questioned the distribution of funds allocated for years to initiatives related to Cuba and asserted that some of that money has ended up benefiting certain individuals.
"Here there are people who pocket millions of dollars. The American opportunities have also declined because the teams haven't performed, yet they continue to hand out their little bills," he stated.
In his view, this situation has generated distrust and skepticism. "There is no doubt that this causes skepticism among the masses. They earn millions and they are also not interested in changing things," he noted.
He also criticized the "lack of credibility" that has accumulated after years of failed efforts, unmet promises, and, as he argued, deceptions.
"Others have been dishonest, continuing, in one way or another, the politics of deception; the electoral politics in the United States to get people to vote for this candidate or that one. And this premise persists that we will be free tomorrow," he said.
"Here are people who are already reaching the point of schizophrenia after waiting for so many absurd promises," he concluded.
Gustavo Marín arrived in the United States in 1961, just 13 years old, a few weeks after his father left Cuba following his detention in the days leading up to the Bay of Pigs invasion. His father held a position in the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, as Marín recounts, belonged to the generation that believed in a democratic and nationalist change for the island.
"My father worked; he held a relatively important position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was part of that generation that believed Cuba was ready for change, a practical change, a change for everyone," Marín recalled in the interview.
After just two weeks in Miami, he initially settled with relatives in Valley Stream, New York. "I spent only two weeks in Miami. For me, the Miami experience barely existed," said Marín. It was in that setting where, years later, he would help found Abdala.
The Abdala Group was founded on January 28, 1968, at the Woodstock Hotel in New York by seven exiled Cuban students. Marín became its first secretary. The organization took its name from a poem by José Martí and positioned itself uniquely: anti-communist while also being anti-imperialist, rejecting both the Castro regime and any foreign patronage over Cuba.
That political ideal, according to Marín himself, was rooted in a deep tradition. "It was the spirit of the mambises, it was the spirit of Martí, it was the spirit of a democratic nationalist revolution with reforms that, instead of holding us back, could propel progress in all areas that needed to be addressed in Cuba."
At its peak, Abdala had between 200 and 300 members spread across 18 delegations in and out of the United States. Its most emblematic action took place on March 13, 1971, when 16 of its members stormed the UN building in New York and chained themselves to the Security Council to denounce the situation of political prisoners in Cuba.
The historian Michael J. Bustamante analyzed the ideological paradox of Abdala in his academic study published in 2015, describing the Agrupación as a case of heterodox "anti-imperialist anti-communism" within the historic Cuban exile.
In 2026, this debate has gained new urgency. More than one million Cubans emigrated to the United States between 2021 and 2025, the exile community appears fragmented, and the reliance on external funding has been identified as one of the factors hindering a cohesive opposition. Voices from the historical exile, such as Marín, defend national sovereignty as an unyielding principle in the face of any form of protectorate or external intervention.
The question that titles the program encapsulates the core of the debate. “We are now going to ask the question that titles this program, which is whether we can bring about change in Cuba without the United States. Is it feasible? Can we achieve it?” Tania Costa posed at the beginning of the conversation, foreshadowing the central theme of an interview that links the history of exile with the dilemmas of the present.
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