Miami: a Cuban Hong Kong?
It is not for nothing that Trump appointed Marco Rubio as the Secretary of State and at the same time the National Security Advisor in his second term. Trump has chosen the Western Hemisphere as his springboard to implement the MAGA movement’s strategy to render the US the absolute ruler of the world to save capitalism out of the swamp it is stuck in. US imperialism is preparing to lean heavily on the Western Hemisphere to conquer the world through a series of policies, from calling Canada “the 51st state of the US” to the so-called “Donroe Doctrine”, an attempt to resuscitate the Monroe Doctrine of the 19th century.
Once this strategic vision is adopted, the target logically emerges: to gain absolute control over the geographical area called “Latin America”, i.e., Central and Southern Americas and the Caribbean, where different Spanish- and Portuguese- (and some French-) speaking peoples live. (Canada is the exception.) The ideal choice to implement this strategy is Marco Rubio, the US-born son of a Spanish-speaking (Latino) migrant family, and former Senator from Florida.
But that is not all. Rubio is not just the son of a Latino family. He is the son of a gusano family. Gusano means “fruitworm” in Spanish. It is the name Cuban revolutionaries call the counter-revolutionaries who flee Cuba and settle in Miami, Florida, the closest US soil, and use any and all methods to overthrow the socialist regime. Cuba is potentially explosive material 150 kilometers off the Florida coast. (Let us add for the reader to visualize how short this distance is: the island of Corsica, which is within the French borders, is 1000 kilometers off the mainland!) The US has done everything it could to destroy it for seven decades. Paranoia? Absolutely not. It is easy to understand the imperialists’ anxiety if one thinks of the role Cuba played in Latin America, especially when Che Guevara was still alive. The only way to dodge the trouble is to turn Cuba back into a gambling and prostitution paradise. It was nearly impossible for US imperialism to find a better conductor for this counterrevolutionary orchestra than Rubio, the son of Miamian fruitworms.
This piece is about the future of these gusanos, that is, the Miamian and Floridian worms, as well as about the future of socialist Cuba.
Miami-Havana, now boarding, last call!
We need to begin this story with the analysis of a brand-new policy of the Cuban state outside of the economic field (we had explored the economic policies in our prior piece). The world and Latin American media have rightly emphasized the shift in the economic policies. But apparently, it has not been able to understand the importance of this other policy that we will now speak of. Or at the very least, the American press (of which we can safely say that it dominates the press of the imperialist bloc with its four or five newspapers, a few TV channels and a few news agencies) over-emphasized the economic policies to hide a deal that is taking shape between the US and the heights of the Cuban state. We caught the clues of this news in the “foreign missions” section of the website of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs! As we searched for more upon this discovery, we could find information only in the American press agency, United Press International. We are not saying that there isn’t more - there was no need to search keenly. But we can safely say that this policy has not been at the forefront of news like the 176 economic measures that were adopted on June 19th.
This new policy brings about changes that completely turn the former system of migration, citizenship, and the law concerning foreigners. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has defined the aim of the policy as “tightening the relations with the Cubans living abroad and bringing measures appropriate to the modern tendencies observed in the mobility behavior of the population [between two countries (US and Cuba)]”. This “sociological” expression might mean two things. Either, there is no such tendency, and the Cuban state itself aims to increase the population mobility between the US and Cuba with these methods. Or, there truly are a few “modern” tendencies, and the Cuban state wants these to increase rapidly. We will see what the difference between these two scenarios means for the development of Cuba in the 21st century in our next piece.
Let us tell our reader the legal changes in this area with an example. In the past, Cuban nationals were limited to a maximum of 24 months to spend abroad. That is to say, Cubans who left the country in whatever way, and stayed in Miami for two years without returning to the country lost their citizenship. Now, this limit is removed. Those who stay in Cuba for 180 days or those who have “deep familial, business, economic or property ties” with the country can (re-)gain their citizenship rights. The “permanent resident” status can be gained through various paths. Maybe most importantly, the new law also includes a new category of “investors and business life”.
We don’t need any further details. This bird’s-eye description demonstrates to us that the Cuban state has completely altered its policy towards the gusanos. In the past, in Fidel’s time, these worms of Miami were perceived as counter-revolutionaries and enemies of Cuba. Now they are approached as patriotic elements who will bring capital, know-how, relations with the American market, technology and other advantages, and can play the role of a conveyor belt between the developed American economy and the poor Cuba. Gusanos are treated as Gastarbeiter who will bring much more than foreign exchange to the country, and who will carry fresh blood to the economy.
Miami and Hong Kong
Now we need to take a bit of a long trip in order to place this “reform” (or rather, “counter-reform”) about immigration, citizenship, and law concerning foreigners that was adopted long before June, all the way back in March, in proper context. The world media repeats frequently: “The Cuban government adopts the Chinese model; it accepts to transition into a market economy, but insists on retaining the political rule in the hands of the Communist Party of Cuba, just like in China”. There is not the slightest bit of originality in this argument. Especially if we keep in mind the 176 measures the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) - governed Assembly of People’s Power unanimously approved on June 19th, we can more easily understand that the PCC has totally adopted the Chinese model.
But the horizon of those who mention the “Chinese model” is limited to this fork, or separation, between economics and politics. Deng Xiaoping model instead of the Michael Gorbachev one. But this new policy on migration/citizenship/foreigners that we just brought up demonstrates that the PCC has been inspired by quite another aspect of the Chinese model, but the world does not see it. Or the bourgeois political scientists who think they are engaging in a high-level analysis do not see it. The imperialist administrators of the US government, on the other hand, do not even mention it, even though they see it, and in fact a part of it, and in fact its inventor!
The aspect of the Chinese-style capitalist restoration is the employment of the bourgeoisie (or petty bourgeoisie) that survived outside of the area conquered by the revolution in the service of disguising the restoration. Let us first briefly touch upon how this matter unfolded in China, and then continue on to the lesson Cuba took from it.
When the 1949 Revolution took place in China, there were a few historic parts of China that the Mao-led Communist Party of China could not reach. The most important of these were Hong Kong and Macao, which could not be included in the revolution due to imperialist occupation, and the island of Taiwan, which the forces of Chiang Khai Shek took refuge in and set up a pseudo-state called “Nationalist China”, hostile to the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese bourgeoisie was already in possession of a trade network active in many countries of Asia (from Singapore to Malaysia), but it was not the dominant element in these. But in these three geographical areas, the Chinese bourgeoisie resumed its existence: with the military support of the US in Taiwan, and under the British and Portuguese colonial rule in Hong Kong and Macao, respectively. Imperialism still claims that Taiwan is an independent country, as everyone knows. But in a process that began with Hong Kong (1997) and continued with Macao (1999), these two regions unified with the People’s Republic of China, one way or another. This unification played a very important role in the emergence of capitalism out of the soil of socialism in China. Let us read succinctly what happened from the pen of a world-class expert on China. Our comrade Burak Gürel explains why certain geographical areas experienced industrial and capitalist development ahead of others once China surrendered to the restorationist policies of Deng Xiaoping in 1978 as follows:
“At the end of the year 1979, the cities of Shenzen, Shantou, and Zhuhai in the State of Guangdong, and in October 1980, the city of Xiamen in the State of Fucien were declared special economic zones. Shenzhen was selected due to its proximity to Hong Kong, Zhuhai to Macao, and Xiamen to Taiwan. Shantou was an important (former) center of the Chinese diaspora. Thus, perhaps one of the biggest diasporic capital units of the world, the Chinese bourgeoisie, who had in important part fled the country after the Revolution of 1949, was now invited into the country by its former class enemy, the CCP. In 1984, 14 cities on the eastern coast, including important cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Tienzhin, were opened up to foreign investment. In 1988, the island of Hainan in the south was determined as the fifth specialist economic zone of the country. In 1990, a huge industrial zone open to foreign capital investment was established in the Pudong district of Shanghai. In 1993, important industrial cities like Wuhan and Chongqing in the Yangtze River Delta were opened up to foreign investment. All these developments were indicating that the process of restoration had evolved from the stage of trial to the stage of deepening.” (Our emphasis.)
The role of Hong Kong among all these locations is incredibly important, because Great Britain, that “Empire upon which the sun never sets”, had over time turned Hong Kong into the number one financial center of Asian capitalism, as an eastern equivalent of the City of London. After China took over Hong Kong from Britain in 1997 through a treaty and incorporated it under the principle of “one country, two systems”, the city became the vital center of the metabolic relationship between those “two systems”, socialism and capitalism.
Of course, the primary actor here was the stock exchange activities of the imperialist capital, who explosively flowed into China after the country became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001. A good part of the stock exchange operations passed through Hong Kong in this process. But the stock exchange in particular, and the world of financial companies in general, is a world where a thousand mechanisms operate to erase the traces of the original source of the money. Thus, within the tangled web of 21st century financial relations, where products turn into derivatives, and there is opportunity to invest into absolutely everything through different methods, the Chinese bureaucracy found a thousand methods to turn its savings (its own savings, or that of its relatives who had grown rich off of their roles as the supplier, subcontractor, or employee of public firms) into investments of an entirely private capitalist character. Hong Kong and Macao, Taiwan and Shantou became the fertile soil upon which the bureaucracy threw off its mask and turned into the bourgeoisie.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Now this is the series of mechanisms that the Cuban bureaucracy is eager to copy and imitate from, and follow in the footsteps of, its big brother (with all due differences as there may be). Miami, the center of the Gusano society, is preparing to play the same role for Cuba that Hong Kong had played in the capitalist restoration in China. This role is to whitewash the private property-based economy that the Cuban “honorable socialist bureaucrats” are creating in the cells of the socialist economy.
But beyond the similarity, let us also note in passing one humorous contrast. In the case of China, the capitalist-ization of a huge country in the mainland had occurred through the contribution and mediation of an island - for, even though the geographical region of Hong Kong does not consist solely of the island, its center lies in the Island of Hong Kong. In Cuba, things run in the exact opposite direction. This time, the country to be capitalized is a Caribbean island with a population of 11 million. Opposing this island is the country that is expected to make it capitalist: a giant that expands across an entire continent, even though (unlike China) it is not one of the most populated countries in the world. Miami, of course, is only one state among 50; but it is backed by the force of the United States in every field. The true pirate of the Caribbean is the greedy finance world of the US. It would not have been wrong to predict that under these conditions, the process of restoration will run much faster. However, there is an important matter: we do not know how the Cuban working class and toilers will react.
The reader may ask: “Well, is there a finance market or a stock exchange in Miami that can perform this function?”. Our answer is: “Yes, there is”. Miami International Securities Exchange, or in short, MIAX.
And we shall not leave the matter with just saying it exists. Whether the reader asks or not, we will also add: The first American stock exchange was founded in 1790 in Philadelphia, and the New York Wall Street (which is still the most voluminous stock exchange in the world) was established in 1792. The US is celebrating its 250th year of foundation, and it has become the homeland of capitalism since World War II. When do you think the Miami Stock Exchange MIAX was founded? 2012.
We shall explore the significance of this late foundation in our next piece, where we explain the history of restoration in Cuba.
June 30, 2026