"Something has to change on the island. It can't stay the way it is," says Janie Frometa Compte.

The 38-year-old, who lives in the eastern city of Dresden, has a very personal stake in what is going on in Cuba right now. Her father Luis — a dual German-Cuban national — is stranded there.

During a visit to relatives in 2021, Frometa Compte was arrested and handed a 15-year jail sentence — for filming protests on his mobile phone. "Our family was never political. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time," Janie tells DW. Despite his unexpected release from jail in March 2025, Luis Frometa Compte is now stuck in Cuba, where authorities refuse to grant him a travel permit.

Cubans in the GDR

Janie's father came to former communist East Germany (GDR) in 1985. He was one of an estimated 30,000 Cubans who arrived between the early 1960s and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Like most of them, he came to work and get vocational training.

In the GDR, Cuba was referred to as a "socialist brother nation." The GDR was part of the Warsaw Pact, affiliated with the Soviet Union, but it was also allied with several communist countries in the developing world, such as Cuba, Mozambique, Angola and Vietnam.

At the time, West Germany was on the opposite side of the ideological divide, allied with the United States and western Europe.

Under an agreement between the GDR and Cuba, young Cubans were expected to stay for four years before returning home. But Luis Frometa Compte fell in love, founded a family and was able to stay on after German reunification. Many others were forced to return  — whether they liked it or not. 

The impact of US politics

Cuba is now undergoing the worst crisis in its over 65-year history. In February 2026, the United States imposed a blockade of oil supplies. This has exacerbated power outages and food, water and medicine shortages. Unrest is growing. Under the pressure, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has begun negotiations with the US.

US President Donald Trump has boasted that he expects to have "the honor of taking Cuba in some form."

Cuba has been a one-party communist state since the revolution of 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrew a military dictatorship backed by the US. In 1961, the US broke diplomatic ties with the island, and imposed a lasting economic embargo, with relations only briefly thawing under President Obama in 2015.

The European Union (EU) went from initial Cold War detachment to a policy of constructive engagement. In 2016, the European Union signed the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (PDCA) intended to strengthen human rights as well as trade with Cuba.

Germany signed a key framework agreement with Cuba in 2015 and opened an investment office in Havana in 2018. Academic exchange and tourism are the main pillars of relations. Trade volumes remain modest.

Germany's foreign ministry has now issued a statement saying that they regard talks between the US and Cuba as the right way of defusing tensions. It adds: "Our fundamental principle is this: We recognize Cuba as a sovereign state."

Initiatives to help relatives in Cuba

Despite his threats, Janie Frometa Compte does not believe that Trump will intervene militarily. She welcomes the international spotlight Trump has thrown on the island.

She doesn't believe the Cuban population can stage an uprising to overthrow the government, unlike East Germans, whose popular protests brought about the collapse of the Communist system in 1989. "The Cubans can't manage it alone. The fear is too great — of ending up in jail and going through what other political prisoners have gone through and still are going through," Janie says.

There are some 1,200 political prisoners in Cuba, according to the Frankfurt-based International Society for Human Rights (IGFM).

Diosdado Jimenez Martínez last visited the island in 2020. He would like to see family and friends again, but he fears detention. "In Cuba, there are no rights. You never know what might happen," he tells DW.

He came to study in communist East Germany and was happy to go back to Cuba in 1989 after graduating in physics. "I wanted to do something for my country," he says. Some 15 years later, however, he returned disillusioned. "It was unbearable. There was no hope. You weren't free. You couldn't express yourself."

Jimenez Martínez, who now works in IT as well as running a Cuban bar near Dresden with his son, is placing his faith in Trump. "This is a great hope for us, just as it is for the Iranians and the Venezuelans," he tells DW.

Skepticism over Trump

Cuban-German Rene Limonte-Brett is vehemently opposed to Trump's threats, but he, too, believes that the situation has to change. He is in close contact with his family in Cuba and knows how desperate things are.

"They need to cook, to shower, they have to do the laundry — do everything, no matter what time of day it is. An aunt was in hospital. She had to be sent home. Because if she died, they wouldn't be able to take her home in a hearse. Because they don't have any fuel," Limonte-Brett tells DW.

"My sister, my brother are at their wits' end. They have no prospects. They have pretty much hit rock bottom," he adds.

Limonte-Brett arrived in the GDR in 1976, where he studied German for two years. He later regularly visited the GDR in his role as an interpreter. Despite high-level contacts to ministries and — even Fidel Castro — through his work, he told DW he subsequently applied for asylum in reunified Germany after being outed as gay by the secret service.

The interpreter disapproves of Trump's talk of doing what he wants with the island. "That's condescension... just arrogance. To think that we Cubans would just accept that and be happy to be taken over by the Americans," Limonte-Brett says.

"I'm pretty desperate because everyone who used to be our friends — who might have the power to exert pressure to get us help — remain silent. China, Russia, and all those countries in Latin America and Africa — where we helped quite selflessly — nothing is coming from those countries. Angola has enough oil, but from Angola — where we ourselves were involved in the war and Cubans died — I hear nothing."

Edited by Rina Goldenberg

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