The document details the significant and largely forgotten expropriation of American properties by Fidel Castro's government in Cuba following his rise to power in 1959. This led to the U.S. government passing legislation allowing certified claimants to seek compensation for these losses, but over 50 years later, the claims remain unresolved amidst continuing complex political relations between the U.S. and Cuba. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing the rights of the affected Americans and advocates for a fair resolution before the embargo can end.

1. {
Americans Forgotten
The largest uncompensated confiscation of American properties
As told by one U.S. Certified Claimant

2. On October 16, 1964, the President signed into law, H.R. 12259, which
became Public Law 88-666, title V of the International Claims
Settlement Act of 1949, as amended, under which the Commission is
authorized to determine the amount and validity of the
CLAIMS OF *AMERICAN CITIZENS,
*WHO WERE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AT THE TIME OF CASTRO’S RISE TO
POWER,
AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT OF CUBA
based upon: (1) debts for merchandise furnished or services rendered
by nationals of the United States; (2) losses arising since January 1,
1959, as a result of the nationalization of other taking of property
belonging to United States nationals; and (3) disability or death of
nationals of the United States resulting from actions taken by, or under
the authority of the Government of Cuba since January 1, 1959.
Subsequently, the Government of the United States terminated
relations with the Government of Cuba after all attempts to negotiate
these claims failed.
President John F. Kennedy
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58824
Foreign Claims Settlement Commission - U.S. Department of Justice

4. Before the 1959 Castro revolution, Cuba and the United States had many
business ties and successful business partnerships. Cuba was one of the most
advanced countries in Latin America, and because of its proximity to Florida’s
coast, it was easy to transport goods from each other's ports. A passenger ferry
ran from Florida to Cuba, making it easy for people to travel routinely back and
forth as well.
Their successes benefited both countries economically and socially, and Cubans
traveled to America and Americans vacationed in Cuba. The United States was
the largest buyer of Cuban sugar, making the U.S. consumer vital to Cuba’s
economy.
Americans lived, worked, and had businesses and industries in Cuba. They
were from many different U.S. states and some traveled back and forth between
countries. Ranchers sold cattle from Florida, farmers sold wheat from Iowa, and
business professionals from major U.S. cities managed their Cuban branch
offices. The relationship between the Cubans and Floridians was even more
heavily invested because of the mere 90 miles between them. And unlike what
Hollywood movies depict, Americans in Cuba were not mobsters or corrupt
corporations running Cuba. These Americans were from “all walks of life” and
provided goods and services to Cuba for generations, surviving through the
turmoil of revolutions and regime changes.
American and Cuban Relationships

5. 1902 Poster Depicting Cuban and U.S. Relations

8. Castro Takes Control of the Cuban Government
In January 1959, Fidel Castro and his militia overthrew the Cuban government. Castro’s
rise to power was one of the most grievous debacles in Cuban-U.S. political history.
Castro’s revolution was not a singlehanded event, but rather it was a series of events and
betrayals, which lead up to the dissolution of a relationship with a friendly pro-
American Cuban government. Castro and his militia were known terrorists, who were
responsible for bombings, murders, kidnappings, blackmailing, and other terroristic
activities throughout Cuba for many years, including the kidnapping of many
Americans.
One of the most grievous decisions that lead to the betrayal of Cuba was when the U.S.
decided to suspend a shipment of arms in March 1958. When news of the suspension
got out, the uncertainty of whom the U.S. supported was ruinous to the Cuban armed
forces and its citizens. This was the beginning of the end for the Cuban government.
Ousted political opponents that were exiled and living in the U.S. pressured our
politicians to rally behind the Castro movement, so some of them did. Meanwhile,
Castro’s militia was receiving secret shipments of weapons via their exiled supporters
from the U.S., while the legitimate Cuban government was denied arms to protect their
citizens from these terrorists.
Once Castro was in power, he ordered the death of all those affiliated with the previous
regime, killing over 500 people. Castro’s infamous murders by firing squads shocked
the world.

9. Originally Published in the Daily News, Washington D.C. on July 4, 1958

10. Fidel Castro and Rebels, Havana, January, 1959

11. U.S. Hostages Captured by Raul Castro - June,
1958

12. Castro began to confiscate private properties when he gained control of Cuba in January
1959. He initially targeted the properties of anyone affiliated or associated with the
previous Cuban government, regardless of citizenship or nationality. Castro then
started to confiscate all properties of Americans in Cuba, including both corporate and
private individual properties.
The first U.S. corporate asset expropriated in March 1959, belonged to the International
Telephone and Telegraph’s subsidiary, the Cuban Telephone Company. Castro enacted a
series of laws that sanctified and allowed his new government to expropriate all private
properties in Cuba. Castro signed the Agrarian Reform Act in May of 1959, which
allowed the confiscation of farmlands. The following year, in October 1960, the new
Cuban government passed laws nationalizing all assets in Cuba. Within two years,
Castro had essentially stripped all citizens living in Cuba, from their rights to own
property, thus enriching his new ruling junta. Castro took an estimated $1.8 billion (in
1960 dollars) in American properties between 1959 and 1960.
The U.S. government did nothing to protect the American properties or stop Castro
from taking them. Many Americans were terrorized when Castro’s militia showed up
with guns, forced them out of their homes, and took all their worldly possessions. Bank
accounts were frozen; cars, land, farms, and all personal possessions were gone. They
took everything and anything that they deemed valuable, and told the Americans to
leave or else. So they left with nothing but their lives and some families simply never
financially recovered.
The American Confiscation

13. Confiscated Home of an American in Cuba

14. The U.S. Certified Claimants
In 1964, the U.S. Congress passed legislation allowing the Foreign Claims
Settlement Commission to open up the Cuba Claims program, with the
intention to certify and verify what the American businesses and individual
families had lost due to expropriation, and to determine a dollar value of lost
assets for each claim. In the end, after all the data and documentation
collection was complete, 5,913 Americans were able to have their lost assets
certified by our United States Government, and we are referred to as the U.S.
Certified Claimants.
This claims program was our one and only hope to ever see compensation
for the expropriation of our properties by the Castro Government. And we
were all hopeful that one day things would change, the embargo would end,
and that our certified claims would be settled and resolved.
No one, including our parents and the U.S. Legislators who were alive and
active with these claims issue in 1964, would have ever imagined that the
Castro government would still be in power and that the claims would still
remain unresolved more than 50 years later.

17. The Cuban Confiscation
In October 1960, the Cuban Government passed laws allowing the nationalization of
all Cuban business and industry, thus making it legal to steal from their own Cuban
citizens. The Cuban government took all Cuban owned businesses, hotels, factories,
mills, plantations, stores, restaurants, farms, and much more. The American
confiscation was small in comparison to what was taken from the Cubans.
The only possession the Cubans were allowed to keep was their cars and certain
personal possessions. It was forbidden to own any items that the Cuban government
deemed as luxury items, so in many cases these were taken away from their rightful
owners and used by the government officials as they pleased. The final blow to the
Cuban people was when the Cuban currency changed, making it impossible to trade
the new currency on the international markets. The Cuban government also limited
the amount of money you could have, so if your bank account was over the limit, any
overage went into its coffers.
The well-educated upper and middle class Cubans fled Cuba in droves. Many of them
settled in Miami, New Jersey, New York, and New Orleans, and eventually became
American citizens. These original Cuban exiles succeeded in the U.S., as they did
before in Cuba. Their children were born, raised, and educated in the U.S., and many
have become outstanding and successful American citizens, and are leaders in
business and government. They are a reflection of their parent’s resilience and
determination to begin a new life where their children could prosper and live free
from tyranny.

18. Cuba Exiles Arriving at Miami Airport

19. After the new Cuban government confiscated the American properties, Cuba
aligned itself with the Soviet Union, marking the beginning of the Cuban
threat against the United States.
The Soviet Union was more than happy to partner with Castro’s Cuba and
send their missiles to Cuba. With this new powerful ally and weapons of
mass destruction at his disposal, Castro launched an agenda of propaganda,
of hate and lies about America. It was during these times that we all were on
edge because of the real threat of the U.S. being bombed by Cuba. Castro’s
famous anti-American speeches were fueled with rhetoric and threats that
the U.S. would be bombed by Cuba, so we were living in tense and fearful
times. Cuba’s proximity to Florida’s coast was now to our disadvantage.
JFK'S "CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS" SPEECH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgdUgzAWcrw
Castro’s Threats to the U.S.

20. Record Setting four-hour and 29-minuted speech
denouncing the United States, 1960, United Nations

21. Fidel Castro’s Anti-American Speech
November 5, 1963

22. Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow,
1961

23. The United States Cuban Embargo
In 1962, President Kennedy signed Proclamation 3447, enacting the embargo on all
trade with the Cuban government. This was in retaliation for the confiscation of
American properties and in response to other hostile Cuban actions and its
alignment with a subversive communist Soviet Union.
Prior to the signing of this proclamation, President Eisenhower began a partial
embargo against Cuba in October 1960, and approved an anti-Castro plan. This
was the beginning of the trade sanctions against Cuba, and it was imposed as a way
to induce the return of the American properties.
Today, there are two political sides to the embargo. One side wants to absolve the
Cuban Government’s past crimes and atrocities, by dissolving our sanctions against
Cuba, thus allowing their constituent's businesses to profit and gain on an early
foothold in the Cuban markets. The other side wants the communism out of Cuba,
personal freedoms restored, and properties compensated to their rightful owners,
including some sort of possible restitution for the Americans that were victims of
Castro’s nationalization of their properties in the 1960’s.
The U.S. Certified claimants understand that Cuba has many complex issues and
that the embargo will soon end. However, the certified claimants are usually
omitted from the Cuban embargo argument and the embargo cannot end, by law, if
the claims are not resolved.

24. The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis were past historical events that
continued the downward spiral in American and Cuban relations. Today’s
issues between Cuba and the U.S. involve an American citizen named Alan
Gross, who was wrongly imprisoned and has been sitting in a Cuban jail for
many years, and the Cuban Five, who were arrested and jailed in the U.S. for
espionage against our country. One of the Cuban Five has been released and
is back in Cuba and the other four are still in jail.
While both the past and current issues between Cuba and the U.S. are
important and significant, this presentation’s goal is to explain what
happened to the Americans that were living and doing business in Cuba,
when Castro overthrew the Cuban government. This was the largest
uncompensated expropriation of properties belonging to Americans, yet most
Americans are unaware of this crime.
Cuba’s Past and Present – Issues Concerning Cuba

25. BAY OF PIGS – ATTEMPTS BY EXILES TO TAKE CUBA BACK
April, 1961

27. The Solution
The solution can come in many forms, including the idea of a user fee on
Cuba’s exports to the United States, and additionally, a user fee tacked on to
what the U.S. exports to Cuba. This would rectify our claims and allow the
Cuban economy to grow, without the burden of a large lump sum cash
settlement. Cuba’s economy will flourish once again, when markets
between the U.S. and Cuba flow again. This fee can be used to pay back the
U. S. Certified Cuban Claimants in full. Even though the U.S. is not directly
to blame for the American confiscation, the lack of action to protect
American properties should reflect some blame and responsibility.
Once all the American claims are paid in full, this user fee can be eliminated
from U.S. exports to Cuba, and maybe the fee can still be collected from the
Cuban exports to the U.S., in order to pay back the original Cubans that had
their properties seized by the Cuban Government. This would be a fair
solution to both confiscations, thus resolving the embargo, and rectifying
what happened to our Cuban American citizens, with the restitution resting
on the shoulders of the Cuban government.

28. If you are a U.S. Certified Claimant, please contact your Congressman and
Senator, and let them know that you want their representation concerning a
fair resolution of your claim. Contact the Foreign Claims Settlement
Commission and make sure they know you are an active participant of your
claim and that they have updated contact information for you. If you
remain silent and inactive and expect the best outcome from your claim by
waiting for the Cuban embargo to end, you would be wrong, because by
then, decisions on a settlement would have already been negotiated.
Even though there has been no announcement of official negotiations for
ending the embargo, we know that there are negotiations going on during
“behind closed doors meetings”. The fate of the claimants will be decided
in those meetings, without our input.
The confiscation of our properties was a main element in the embargo
legislation, so we should also be the main focus and element to the ending
of the U.S. Cuban Embargo.
Wake Up U.S. Certified Claimants!

29. Varadero Beach, Cuba, 1941

30. Why Americans Should Care
Americans and our political leader cared about us in the past, but today’s
Americans are either misinformed or uninformed as to who we are, and what
happened to us in Cuba some 55 years ago. The generalization and assumption that
all Americans living and working in Cuba were corrupt or associated with the
mafia, is emphatically not true, but nearly impossible to rectify. Some call us an
“obstacle” to the ending of the embargo, however, when it first happened, we were
the “victims” of a confiscation. We bought our properties legally and within the
Cuban legal system, unlike the way Castro’s militia took our properties, which was
sometimes at gunpoint.
The Americans that lived in Cuba were also well-educated wealthy and middle
class Americans. They were successful leaders and entrepreneurs who were
conducting business as usual, contributing greatly to the Cuban economy, when
their personal belongings and businesses were taken. If your agenda is to discredit
and dismiss us as un-American and not worth helping, then that is an indication of
where the United States is headed. Some people prefer to regard a communist
dictator as the victim, and the Americans that were harmed by him as criminals.
Our forefathers fought and died for our freedoms, and it is an inherent “right” to
own property. Property rights are the foundation of a free and civil society, and
without those freedoms and rights, we are slaves. This is true for both Cuban and
American citizens.

31. Isle of Pines, Cuba, 1941

32. It is time to assert yourself and let other Americans know what happened to
your family. Write to your Senators and congressional representatives, and
President Obama. Let them know that you are a holder of a U.S. Certified
Claim, and as an American citizen, you expect your government to find a
solution for a fair compensation of our claims before the embargo ends. Please
President Obama, don’t let Castro steal from us again.
If you are a certified claimant and are interested in hearing about the current
issues and our solutions concerning the claims and embargo, please feel free to
contact us. We are always working on the claims issue. We know that there
are those who are attempting to rewrite history by tainting us as something
other than what we really are. We are the Americans who were wronged.
This needs to be made right! The emotional impact of this crime may have
appeared to have diminished over time, but the lessons still remain clear.
Those lessons should not be forgotten and should serve to teach and / or
remind all Americans about this injustice so that they too will know and care
about the U.S. Certified Claimants!
Email us at: AmericanCertifiedClaims@gmail.com
Help Fight For Your Claim!

33. Pinar del Rio, Cuba, 1941

34. Property rights are human rights. The
definition, allocation, and protection of
property rights comprise one of the most
complex and difficult sets of issues that any
society has to resolve, but one that must be
resolved in some fashion.
PropertyRights.html

35. Cuban Embargo Proclamation
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58824http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58824
Suspension of Arms to Cuba
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cable/cable-5-2-58.htm
Castro’s Kidnapping of Americans
http://cuba1952-1959.blogspot.com/2009/12/1958-castro-rebels-take-us-hostages.html
Castro’s Infamous Firing Squads
http://www.therealcuba.com/page5.htm
Castro Denounces the U.S. Record Breaking at the UN
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39292095/ns/world_news/t/what-watch-un-world-leaders-who-dislike-us/#.U4FlsV4ipZh
Foreign Claims Settlement Commission
http://www.justice.gov/fcsc/final-report-cuba-1972.pdf
Office of Foreign Asset Controls
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/cuba.aspx
Who Lost Cuba-Hearing with U.S. Cuban Ambassadors Gardner and Smith
http://latinamericanstudies.org/us-cuba/gardner-smith.htm
Names of the American’s Who Have U.S. Certified Claims
http://www.justice.gov/fcsc/readingroom/ccp-listofclaims.pdf
Castro’s Speech Threats to the U.S.
http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1959/19590422.html
U.S. State Department Meeting-The Future of Castro’s Revolution 1959
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/embassy/R25-Memo-9-18-1959.pdf
Classified Communications U.S. Cuban Embassy and the State Dept.
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/embassy-1955-59.htm
PBS Timeline for Cuba
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/castro/timeline/
Outstanding Claims Expropriated Property Cuba
http://www.ascecuba.org/publications/proceedings/volume21/pdfs/anillo.pdf
Solution User Fee
http://www.pobletetamargo.com/the-pt-law-blog/international-claims/settle-american-claims-against-cuba