Donald Trump deepens Cuba escalation by targeting officials, institutions, and their families

Cuban Pres­i­dent Miguel Díaz-Canel (Pho­to: Irene Pérez/ Cubade­bate, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

Don­ald Trump’s law­less, inter­ven­tion-obsessed regime is advanc­ing its crim­i­nal activ­i­ty pro­vides legal legit­i­ma­cy for war play­book in Cuba, orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped for Pana­ma and most recent­ly imple­ment­ed in Venezuela, through new sanc­tions via the State Depart­ment against five indi­vid­u­als and five organizations.

On May 1st, Trump issued Exec­u­tive Order 14404, which imposed “…Sanc­tions on Those Respon­si­ble for Repres­sion in Cuba and for Threats to Unit­ed States Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and For­eign Pol­i­cy.” This Exec­u­tive Order was built on Exec­u­tive Order 14380, issued on Jan­u­ary 29th, 2026, which declared a nation­al emer­gency with respect to Cuba and estab­lished a frame­work for the impo­si­tion of tar­iffs on coun­tries that sup­ply oil to Cuba. (Rus­sia vio­lat­ed this Exec­u­tive Order by sup­ply­ing oil to Cuba on March 30th, 2026, with­out enforce­ment or pun­ish­ment by the Unit­ed States.)

The Trump regime based their lat­est set of sanc­tions on Exec­u­tive Order 14404.

The five orga­ni­za­tions sanc­tioned were:

• the Min­istry of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Cuba  (MINFAR);
• the Cuban Insti­tute of Friend­ship with the Peo­ples (ICAP), which has been accused of sup­port­ing Cuban intel­li­gence and counter-intel­li­gence activities; 
• Amis­tur Cuba SA, an orga­ni­za­tion focused on cul­tur­al exchange pro­grams between Cuba and oth­er nations, and which has been des­ig­nat­ed as con­trolled by ICAP and thus by the Cuban Government; 
• the Com­mit­tees for the Defense of the Rev­o­lu­tion (CDR), which both imple­ment ser­vices at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el but have long been accused of sur­veil­lance and repres­sion of dis­si­dent opinions; 
• and Min­era la Vic­to­ria SA, which is a joint ven­ture for gold min­ing in Cuba between GeoMin­era SA and the Aus­tralian min­ing enti­ty Antilles Gold Limited.

The five peo­ple sanc­tioned were Pres­i­dent Miguel Diaz-Canel of Cuba; his part­ner, Lis Cues­ta Per­aza; Manuel Anido Cue­sa, Diaz-Canel’s step­son and Peraza’s son; Ale­jan­dro Cas­tro Espin, son of Raul Cas­tro, who was once head of the Cuban Min­istry of Defense and broth­er to long­time Cuban leader Fidel Cas­tro; and Raul Ale­jan­dro Cas­tro Calis, the son of Ale­jan­dro Cas­tro Espin.

In one sense, these sanc­tions are “spack­ling the cracks” that couldn’t legit­i­mate­ly be addressed through the U.S. State Department’s indict­ment of May 20th, 2026. The regime’s move essen­tial­ly ensures that Cuban mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence infra­struc­ture is ful­ly tar­get­ed, that cul­tur­al iso­la­tion accom­pa­nies the eco­nom­ic iso­la­tion imposed through embar­go since 1960 by the Unit­ed States, and that what might be Cuba’s one chance at sig­nif­i­cant access to cap­i­tal from abroad will be strangled.

But what is most dis­turb­ing is the deci­sion to tar­get not only Cuba’s sit­ting pres­i­dent, Miguel Díaz-Canel, but also his part­ner and step­son — as well as Ale­jan­dro Cas­tro Espín, a prin­ci­pal focus of the Trump regime’s cam­paign against Cuba, togeth­er with his son and grand­son. Ale­jan­dro Cas­tro Espin is con­sid­ered a major behind-the-scenes actor with­in Cuban mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, but there isn’t any­thing known pub­licly to be of con­cern regard­ing Lis Cues­ta Per­aza or Raul Ale­jan­dro Cas­tro Calis. 

Manuel Anido Cue­sa lives in Madrid and works for the Cuban gov­ern­ment, but oth­er than accom­pa­ny­ing his step­fa­ther, the Pres­i­dent, to a cou­ple of offi­cial events, his access and appli­ca­tion of pow­er is large­ly deemed one step removed from nonex­is­tent – he’s best known in the Span­ish-speak­ing world for pos­si­bly hav­ing had a rela­tion­ship with Ana de Armas, an actress best known in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world for her roles in the first Knives Out movie, Bladerun­ner 2049 and No Time to Die.

This is tak­ing the Venezue­lan approach deep­er – tar­get­ing not just the wife and child of the Head of State, but the son and grand­son of the per­son pri­mar­i­ly accused. 

We should be dis­turbed by inten­si­fy­ing these actions and what might come next.