I agree in principle with the above opinion. My complete name is Gracia Antonieta Fernandez Machado, daughter of Alberto Fernandez Ballcorba and Graciela Machado Garcia, owners, of the property on calle 37 #1525 entre Este y Parque in Nuevo Vedado. My parents left the deed of the house as it was customary at the police station when they left in 1962. I do not have a copy of this deed. If I were to request some compensation or recognition of my having inherited this property, what documentation can I present to some possible court? I know that similar cases were presented in Eastern Europe some years ago. Any information you can give me will be greatly appreciated. As well as some publications in this regard. Thank you.

Heya…my very first comment on your site. ,I have been reading your blog for a while and thought I would completely pop in and drop a friendly note. . It is great stuff indeed. I also wanted to ask..is there a way to subscribe to your site via email?

I can see that you are an expert at your field! I am launching a website soon, and your information will be very useful for me.. Thanks for all your help and wishing you all the success.

Comments on this is pure rubbish. I believe in the rights of the Cuban people living in Cuba; however, there is so much compassion given to them and not to those who lost their homes, cars, jewelry, and all of the the money in the bank in Cuba. How about those people? The confiscation of property is unconstitutional according to the 1940 Cuban Constitution. Furthermore, who in the world are you to place opinions as if the Cubans living in Miami or elsewhere in the US have suffered less than Cubans in Cuba. You are wrong!!!!! dead wrong! My grandmother and mother would have been killed if they stayed there since Castro was against the upper middle and rich. For years, my grandmother was depressed at losing everything, her life and her inheritance and came here (a graduate of the Havana University) to work in a coin laundry. What do you know of pain and disgrace. My grandmother had her house built on the 5th Avenue in Miramar and was never even able to live in it. Do you know what that house meant to her? and that every design on it was made by her? Do you know what it is to be somebody and to have everything and then have nothing and then to say THANK YOU to Castro because he let her leave with $150.00 usd on Jan 1st of 1960 and one piece of luggage. I am sorry but the suffering that she endured as well as my mother who was 17 years old was enough to fill many lifetimes. FYI: At the time of my family's departure from Cuba people were being executed in the Paredon. What should be done is this: Return the properties to the people and respect the constitution. IF not, Cuba will be seen as a high risk country with no security or confidence for investors to invest or purchase anything. Anyway, doesn't the IRS forever hunt you for even a penny that you owe them? Isn't the US govt blocking Cuba for the return of their properties. I am sure the Barcardi Family will play a strong role to make justice prevail. You must be a communist.

Your comments are pure emotion. It is indeed terrible that many people lost their fortunes, homes, families, etc. after the revolution, but how am I communist? Read the rest of the blog if in doubt. As a Cuban, I know what you mean by that accusation... it is the empty accusation of those who disagree with someone else and have nothing to contribute to a discussion except sad stories about what you have lost to true communists... so you scream commie when people disagree. Sad.

To put things in perspective, my dear, my family could not build houses in Miramar, could not afford escape during 1960, and could not claim to have 150 USD during the time of the revolution... yet our recompense was prison, death, and totalitarianism. A coin laundry is paradise compared to las gavetas en Cuba. FYI: at the time of your family's departure, my family was still in the crosshairs of that very same Paredon. I'm not the only one. We did not stay out of sympathy to the revolution, we simply had no means and many of us went to prison trying to find a way out.

So you would punish those who were forced to stay under the heel of a brutal dictatorship because your abuelita was sad about her house in Miramar? Was her suffering worse than my abuelito who spent years in prison for building a boat to try to leave during the sixties? So much worse that any Cuban will have to relocate if they are living or standing on land that once upon a time belonged to exiles' ancestors? I would think that years in freedom would enrich our souls, make us more civilized than those we escaped... but then again, I am an idealist.

Cuba is currently a high risk country because they do not pay their debts. So this argument makes no sense. A new government, a nascent democratic republic would have an undue burden, both economic and social, if the crimes of the previous communist regime were visited upon it. Yet that is what you advocate.

My policy is simple. Take everything from the communists, the guilty ones, and apportion as much as is just to those who lost their property and wealth to the communists. From the Cuban people, the innocent ones, take nothing and let them live in freedom. Not every Cuban was complicit in taking your abuelita's Miramar house, thus they shouldn't have to pay for it! Especially after paying so much by living under Castro!

It is the communists who perpetuate the idea that exiled Cubans will come and take away all the homes and property from island Cubans, in order to make them fear us. Don't play into their game...

Thank you for your reply. Perhaps yes, I responded in emotion but you somehow belittle my family's situation. I am sorry for what happened to you and your family. It is a tragedy. Castro punished those who were in the middle classes to the very wealthy. He, as an illegitimate child (and later a resentful adult), who was probably made fun of and scorned hated the affluent. I am well aware that not all Cubans who stayed in Cuba were communists. In the past, I have always been amazed that Batista, who left with 300M usd, was never forced to return those funds to Cuba since the revolution was to overthrow his corrupt government....he was untouched. In any case, yes you are an idealist. I was not born in Cuba but here in the US. Cubans in Cuba seem to think that just the mere reason that Cuban exiles who came here in the beginning of the revolution had it made just because they were in the US. That is a total misconception. I will not go into the long torrid story but my grandmother and mother never had a wonderful quality of life here in the US; in fact, it was completely inferior in most cases to the life they had in Cuba. Yet, they were extremely grateful to the US for having been able to at least have FREEDOM and so am I. My grandfather died just before the revolution in an accident and my great grandfather stayed there for reasons that perhaps he believed that Castro's future was short lived even though my family was receiving death threats. Both my grandfather and great grandfather had very prominent professional positions and were in private practice. This is just to give you an idea of the situation. My mother today, if asked, will tell you that the only time in her life that she felt joy "alegria" was from the time she was born until she was 17 years old and had to leave Cuba. After that, there was no joy and my grandmother was not just sad she was for 10 years clinically depressed ranging from mild to severe. So I will tell you this: You did not love my grandmother I did; in fact, I adored her. She was reason of all of my reasons. She taught me everything that was good, decent and honorable. She was an exceptional human being and my birth was the end of her depression which means I was born to save her. This is getting somewhat very intimate and providing you with details that you surely do not care about since this is a blog to speak about property claims period. My reasoning is different than yours. I believe many Cubans (not all) escaped with their lives but they were alive in the physical sense psychologically they had died on that day they left Cuba and left their dreams, illusions, culture, friends, and everything else that makes a person feel "alive." This is why I say you are leaning towards the situation of the Cubans in Cuba so you are bias. Who told you that the Cubans here want compensation for their homes? Many of them want their homes period. They have emotional ties to it for whatever reason on top of the fact that they paid for it with their hard work. Cuban exiles have made this clear that compensation is not an option. They want their property. Your proposal will not work and in my view affluent Cuban Americans (Bacardi, Fanjul, Goizueta, Mas Canosa and others) will implement their wealth and political power to bring justice to the exiles and at the same time I believe a construction plan of subsidized low income housing will take effect immediately also with their clout. The US will also retrieve the tonnage of confiscated companies + 6% interest per year since 1960. Total debt is 6-7B so far. The good news is, since you are primarily concerned with the Cubans in Cuba, not the Cubans in US whatever their situation, the popular belief that the exiles will arrive to recoup their properties and throw XX families out of their homes is false. No one will do that. They will go through legal process and try to help those familys as much as possible. There will be so many opportunities and jobs in a free Cuba that those Cubans will do well and will be assisted; there is already a set plan in place and I can assure you that something like this is going to happen. If you take history into consideration, you will learn that in other countries where revolutionary governments have taken control in the end the properties of the exiles were returned to them. Even today, property is still being returned to the affected Jews in Nazi Europe. With all that being said, to have your property returned is or will be joyous but this doesn't mean the bank accounts will be returned (let's see), jewelry/wedding rings that could not be taken out of the country, and many other articles of value multiplied by all the years you were deprived of it. Try to have more compassion also for the Cubans that came here to a country that was foreign to them and all the troubles they faced while here. If you investigate it and really inform yourself of the struggles you may wind up sitting down and crying. As for Cubans in Cuba, I never knew Cuba and I decided to go a few months ago. As soon as I arrived there I was interviewed and detained for about half an hour. They knew who I was and asked me about my family and that I was one of the children of the affluents....... what a welcome. I said I just wanted to visit and go to the Colon Cemetery and visit my grandfather and my mother's home. When the doors of the airport opened I saw all the Cubans there outside and I looked around and burst into tears just because I was in Cuba....the emotion was overwhelming and I am not very emotional except for lately. I was always told that I was born in the US because of a mistake and should have been born in Havana. This is also something Castro took away from me and my family. Good luck to you.

I also wanted to add that you should look up post-Castro plans by Cubans Americans in the CANF headed by the Mas Canosa Family. Also the Helms-Burton Act (backed up by the persistence of the Barcardi Family) and other laws and plans made by this government in conjunction with Cuban American Organizations. Also, please read over the Cuban Constitution usurped by Castro of 1940 where it states that private property cannot be confiscated whereas what has been done is unconstitutional. The future plan should be assist both sides (Cubans and Cubans in the USA) and in some cases on an individual basis. Remember not all the homes in Cuba belong to the exiles for God sakes. There is perhaps a little over one million people that left 45-51 years ago so go figure on a country whose population was, at that time, 6 million. Maybe we are talking about 500-800,000 homes. Anyway, this is a difficult subject as you have seen by my tirade. In any case, Cuba is blocked from receiving any assistance from the International Financial Institutions (set by the embargo and Helms Burton Act). I believe that Cuba in order to be seen as a serious country where an investor/purchaser has buying security and who abides by laws of the international community must return property owned by the US or if they accept monetary compensation then so be it via an amortization payment plan and if there are Cuban exiles (very few) who also accept this so be it for that particular family. Not mine, of course, you know that. At the moment, no one lives in my home on the 5th Avenue in Miramar; luckily the house is set as an embassy or an ambassadors/consulates home when in Havana so I will not have the extremely sad and unpleasant task to move a family out of my home and if I did I can assure you that it would be done with extreme compassion and assistance. Take care and I apologize if I went too far to call you a communist. I am really tired of hearing that the poor deserve more than we do just because we studied, graduated, broke our brains and backs working and made a good living. No one should be punished for that to the contrary. My family endlessly helped people that had less than they did.