Despite his title as president of the Cuban National Association of Sugar Mill Owners, he has never visited Cuba. They don’t even run a sugar factory there.
“I grew up here in Miami,” Nicholas J. Gutierrez told CNN. “My father instilled in me a love of Cuba, and when he passed away I was surprised at how ingrained it was.”
Mr. Gutierrez, a lawyer and consultant, described his late father as a “young billionaire” who fled Cuba to support anti-Castro rebels, leaving behind vast fortunes in sugar mills, banks and other commercial ventures.
As president of the Sugar Mill Owners Association, Gutierrez says he has spent much of his career advocating for the Cuban diaspora in the United States who want the return of billions of dollars in assets left behind in Cuba.
Things are looking up recently. Former President Raul Castro, 94, has been indicted by the US government, President Donald Trump has hinted that he will soon “occupy” Cuba, and fellow Miami native Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, is at the helm of US diplomacy.
“Over the years, I have represented probably thousands of Cuban families just like myself,” Gutierrez said. “We’ve been hopeful for years, but never, never, ever, have we had a situation where so many factors were blocking change in Cuba.”
One of those factors came into play days after Gutierrez spoke to CNN. The Supreme Court announced an 8-1 decision allowing the Cuban government’s lawsuit over confiscated property to proceed.
Gutierrez, who was not a plaintiff but had been closely following the case as it navigated the U.S. court system, said he was “thrilled” by the ruling. “This is the culmination of decades of effort,” he said.
This central concern of Mr. Gutierrez’s career runs through the U.S.-Cuba relationship: the thousands of claims by U.S. citizens and businesses against property confiscated by Cuba’s communist government. After taking interest into account, the estimated total amount is more than $9 billion, according to U.S. government statistics.
Ricardo Torres, an economist at American University, told CNN that this is “a pretty high priority issue and one of the first things that comes up every time our two countries come into contact.”
Cuba’s wave of nationalization began soon after rebel forces led by Fidel Castro took control of the country in 1959. Rural Cuba was extremely poor and underdeveloped before and during the Batista era, and land ownership was poor among the working poor. First introduced was an agrarian reform program that prohibited foreign ownership of land and divided large tracts of private land and redistributed it to Cuba’s peasant class.
“At the time, agrarian reform was needed to nationalize Cuba’s infrastructure,” said Lilian Guerra, director of the Cuba Program at the University of Florida. “That gigantic project of putting the country’s resources in the hands of the people predates Castro’s political career.”
But Guerra said Castro went a step further in 1960 and “deliberately provoked conflict with the United States” by carrying out large-scale nationalizations of American companies, including oil refineries, sugar mills and banks.
The White House responded with economic sanctions, and then-President Dwight Eisenhower instituted the first trade embargo with an export ban, beginning an economic blockade of Cuba that lasted, with some variations, for nearly 70 years.
At the time, the United States had certified approximately 6,000 claims by American citizens and businesses against nationalized real estate in Cuba, with an initial estimated value of approximately $1.9 billion, which is now valued at more than $9 billion, equivalent to the 6% simple interest rate applied by the United States in 1960.
The dispute between former property owners and the Cuban government was enacted into U.S. law in 1996 after the Cuban military shot down two U.S. military planes. The Helms-Burton Act is intended to restrict third-country commercial activity in Cuba, but it also allows U.S. citizens to sue those who “smuggle” expropriated property.
The law also directly ties any access between the United States and Cuba to their assets. Lifting the embargo would require Cuba to transition to a “representative democracy” and for its new government to take “appropriate steps” to return expropriated assets.
One American citizen who wants a refund is author Enrique Carrillo, whose family ran a large rum business in Cuba until the industry was nationalized after the revolution. He told CNN he was optimistic after seeing the Trump administration’s stance on Cuba.
“We never anticipated that recovery of Cuban assets could begin so quickly,” Carrillo told CNN. “I never thought something like this would happen in my lifetime. But that’s the new thing. I absolutely want my assets back and we’re ready to do that too.”
Professor Guerra of the University of Florida doesn’t have a very good outlook. She believes the exiles’ claims are not about the property rights of ordinary Cubans, but about nostalgia for pre-revolutionary Cuba, when the landowning class held tremendous power over the island.
“There is a community of far-right people who want to reclaim what they see as Cuba’s great past,” Guerra said. “Trump isn’t interested in helping me get my grandfather’s house back in Fontanard. He’s interested in helping a powerful family that wants revenge get back what they think they’re owed.”
But Gutierrez refuses to characterize the movement to reclaim lost property as “right-wing.”
“I have conservative leanings and am a Republican politically,” Gutierrez said. “But I don’t think the positions I’m advocating for Cuba can accurately be described as far-right.”
Torres, an economist at American University, said it was highly unlikely that the Cuban government would be able to repay expropriated property to the Cuban diaspora.
“In the economic situation that Cuba finds itself in today, immediate compensation on a large scale and in full is unthinkable,” Torres said. “That would simply be impossible.”
Cuba also has its own claims to the United States. Every year, the Cuban government complains to the United Nations about the damage caused by the years-long embargo. It claimed that in 2025, the cumulative losses over the past decades will have reached about $170 billion.
Additionally, Cuba filed a lawsuit in 1999 for “human damages” resulting from decades of exile extremist activity between the United States and Cuba, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban domestic flight that killed 73 people. A Cuban court ordered the U.S. government to pay the Cuban government $181.1 billion. The ruling came shortly after a U.S. judge ordered Cuba to pay $187 million to the families of those killed in the Brothers to Rescue shootout.
Torres said the best model for the thorny question of Cuban assets may be found in another Cold War context: Vietnam. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnam sought compensation and reconstruction assistance. However, by the late 70s, the Vietnamese stopped actively seeking reparations without formally abandoning their original position.
According to Torres’ analysis, this concession paved the way for the United States to eventually lift the embargo, recognize Vietnam, and provide humanitarian aid.
“If a real window opens to resolve the issues on the table, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cuba says, ‘We’re dropping these claims. We don’t want any obstacles,'” Torres said. “That’s what the Vietnamese did. When the process restarted, they never mentioned it again.”
However, Vietnam’s Cuba model would, by definition, leave Cuba’s model of government intact. To Gutierrez (and Helms-Burton’s actions), this is unacceptable.
“We’re very wary of any kind of dealings with any part of the regime, like what happened in Venezuela,” Gutierrez said. “I would like to make a fresh start.”
He believes that “fresh start” could arrive as early as this year.
“We have a Cuban-American Secretary of State in our administration, and we have other Cuban-Americans in key positions,” Gutierrez continued. “We have midterm elections coming up in November. I think something will be done by then.”
