{"id":4996,"date":"2026-06-06T04:49:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T01:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/trump-sanctions-cubas-castro-family-and-puppet-president\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T04:49:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T01:49:26","slug":"trump-sanctions-cubas-castro-family-and-puppet-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/trump-sanctions-cubas-castro-family-and-puppet-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Sanctions Cuba&#8217;s Castro Family and Puppet President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The designations announced Thursday also target <strong>D\u00edaz-Canel&#8217;s<\/strong> wife and stepson\u2014the latter reportedly linked romantically to Hollywood actress <strong>Ana de Armas<\/strong>\u2014along with several regime organizations. The sanctions block their ability to conduct business with American citizens and companies, and could result in foreign third parties facing penalties under U.S. law for any dealings with the designated individuals.<\/p>\n<p>The State Department rolled out sanctions against five individuals and five entities under Executive Order 14404, which permits expanded sanctions on the Cuban communist regime. Beyond more than fifty years of severe human rights violations against its own citizens, the Castro regime holds designation as a U.S. state sponsor of terrorism, with documented ties to anti-American criminal networks including jihadist terror organizations like Hezbollah and narco-terror groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.<\/p>\n<p>The five individuals sanctioned are D\u00edaz-Canel and his wife <strong>Lis Cuesta<\/strong>, her son <strong>Manuel Anido Cuesta<\/strong>, and dictator <strong>Ra\u00fal Castro&#8217;s<\/strong> son <strong>Alejandro Castro Esp\u00edn<\/strong> and grandson <strong>Raul Alejandro Castro Calis<\/strong>. The targeted organizations include the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (MINFAR), which functions as the leadership body of Cuba&#8217;s armed forces; the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), neighborhood spy networks deployed to intimidate and suppress dissent; the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), which promotes leftist agitation internationally; and Amistur Cuba, an ICAP subsidiary.<\/p>\n<p>The State Department stated that the Cuban regime continues to prioritize the export of radical left-wing violence through its malign influence networks and regime enrichment over the welfare of the Cuban people. The sanctions are intended to hold international actors supporting the Cuban regime accountable, as <em>Breitbart News<\/em> reports.<\/p>\n<p>Foreign banks and companies providing services to those designated face sanctions risk and should immediately freeze such activities, the State Department warned.<\/p>\n<p>The Department emphasized that the sanctions respond to political, ideological, and institutional warfare against the United States by the Cuban government, in addition to its human rights abuses against the Cuban population.<\/p>\n<p>Several of the sanctioned individuals have previously faced American penalties. Alejandro Castro Esp\u00edn and his siblings were barred from entering the United States in 2019. Castro Esp\u00edn ranks among the most powerful Castro family members\u2014substantially more influential than figurehead president D\u00edaz-Canel\u2014serving as a senior official within Cuba&#8217;s complex espionage network. His father Ra\u00fal Castro was indicted in a U.S. criminal court in May on charges of murder and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals for his involvement in the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue incident that killed four Cuban-Americans.<\/p>\n<p>D\u00edaz-Canel published a social media tirade Friday condemning the sanctions, while his wife characterized them as almost an honor.<\/p>\n<p>The Cuban president wrote that the U.S. president makes new threatening declarations against Cuba and the Treasury Department adds new names of Cuban officials, organizations, and companies to an illegitimate sanctions list. He claimed the measures are designed to hurt the Cuban people.<\/p>\n<p>The aggression and perversion of the Yankee government will crash against Cuban resolve to face worst-case scenarios and resist the imperial assault, the figurehead predicted.<\/p>\n<p>Cuesta offered a more concise response to the sanctions, stating <em>it is almost an honor to be on that list.<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DiazCanelB\/status\/2062665575030288604\"><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>She added that they never tire of ridicule and political stupidity.<\/p>\n<p>The sanctions expand economic action by the White House to create realistic enforcement of the embargo that has existed symbolically over Cuba for decades but has only been lightly enforced. Prior to this week&#8217;s designations, the State Department imposed particularly devastating sanctions on Grupo de Administraci\u00f3n Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), a corporate entity controlled by the Cuban military used to control the tourism and mining sectors in the country, channeling profits to finance the lavish lifestyles of the Castro family.<\/p>\n<p>As a consequence, at least four major international hotel chains that worked with GAESA to manage luxury properties on the island have reduced their investment in the country. Most notably, the Spanish hotel chain Meli\u00e1, which manages some of the most expensive hotels in Cuba, announced this week that it would cease operating 15 of its 34 properties there.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right\"><em>With information from <a href=\"https:\/\/breitbart.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Breitbart News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. State Department imposed sanctions on Cuban President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel, his family, Castro relatives, and regime organizations for human rights abuses and terrorism ties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[5461,5463,2205,2387,4097,5462,209],"nfg_topic":[135],"class_list":["post-4996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-castro-family","tag-communist-regime","tag-cuba","tag-miguel-diaz-canel","tag-sanctions","tag-state-department","tag-united-states","nfg_topic-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4996"},{"taxonomy":"nfg_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/nfg_topic?post=4996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}