Trump has promised Cuban Americans that 2026 is the year of change. But University of Miami historian Michael Bustamante says the political reality doesn't match the expectation. Cuba's opposition is weak, divided, and mostly in jail or in exile, with no clear figure ready to take over if the government was to fall.

Some parallels have been drawn to the Venezuela regime decapitation that took place earlier this year. But Venezuela had a fractious but organized opposition that came together around the 2024 election and, by most accounts, won it. Cuba does not have that. Bustamante says the parallel to Venezuela actually cuts the other way. If the Trump administration concluded that even Venezuela's organized opposition wasn't ready to govern, how can it reach a different conclusion about Cuba? "That is not a case that they're making," he says. The gap between the expectations in Miami and the realities in Havana is growing harder to ignore.