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For over seven million people in the United States, Alzheimer’s is a slow erasure of memory, identity and connection. As pharmaceutical giants charge staggering prices for treatments that offer limited results with dangerous side effects, a potential breakthrough has emerged from Cuba, a country subjected to more than six decades of U.S. economic warfare.

Our latest documentary, Teresita’s Dream, tells the story of how a Cuban scientist, amid sanctions and scarcities, has developed an Alzheimer’s medication that could “change the world.”

Teresita’s Dream is now available on Patreon!

Also this week:

Talks in Havana, War Drums in Miami
Rubio's Cynical Aid Charade
40 Years After Jesse Jackson’s Havana Visit, His Son Returns
Cuban Americans: "Rubio Doesn't Speak for Me"
"Monsters Against Their Own People"
Who’s Spying on Whom?
“No Military Solution”: UN Chief Slams U.S. Sanctions
As War on Cuba Escalates, Companies Settle Lawsuits
Rising Gas Prices as Russian Tanker Stalls

Cuban Medicine Defies the Odds

From the development of five COVID-19 vaccines to the world’s first meningitis B vaccine and an innovative lung cancer treatment, Cuba’s biotech industry has long punched above its weight. But no achievement may be as significant as NeuroEPO, a non-invasive nasal drop that has been shown to stabilize the progression of Alzheimer’s and to even improve cognitive function in many patients. Crucially, the medication, commercially known as NeuralCIM, has produced significantly fewer side effects in clinical trials than leading FDA-approved Alzheimer's drugs.

“Making this drug available to the rest of the world is a mandate. It’s not a wish,” Dr. Bill Blanchet, a physician from Colorado who has more than 50 patients taking the medication, told Belly of the Beast in an exclusive interview.

A Daughter’s Love Sparks a Scientific Breakthrough

The scientist behind NeuroEpo is Dr. Teresita Rodríguez.

Teresita’s journey began when her mother, Amelia, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Determined to help her, Teresita joined her colleagues at Cuba’s Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM) who were working on a medication for neurodegenerative diseases.

When Teresita realized the experimental drug could be effective in treating Alzheimer’s, she started administering it to Amelia. The results Teresita witnessed were striking and would lay the foundation for what many believe could become a game changer for Alzheimer’s treatment around the world.

Belly of the Beast’s latest documentary, Teresita's Dream, tells the story of the personal quest behind one of Cuba’s most extraordinary scientific achievements.

The film is available now to our Patreon subscribers.

Join our Patreon to watch the documentary, gain early access to our content and support grassroots journalism in Cuba.

Teresita’s Dream will be released on YouTube on May 17.

Innovation Under a Blockade

NeuroEPO was developed amid an intensifying economic war waged by the U.S. government.

Cuba’s biotechnology sector depends on highly specialized imported reagents, machinery and replacement parts, many of which are barred from export to the island by sanctions. But Washington’s Cold War-era policy toward Cuba doesn’t only obstruct the development and production of Cuban medicines. It also severely restricts their ability to reach patients abroad, particularly in the United States.

“It would be very unfair if this product couldn’t reach other parts of the world,” Teresita says in Teresita’s Dream. “It’s frustrating to think this could happen because of politics.”

Talks in Havana, War Drums in Miami

CIA Director John Ratcliffe led a delegation to Havana Thursday, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Cuba since the Obama-era opening to the island. According to Barak Ravid of Axios, Ratcliffe met with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former President Raúl Castro, Minister of Interior Lázaro Álvarez Casas, and the head of Cuban intelligence services in Havana.

U.S. officials told Axios that the Trump administration “wants to ensure that a non-repressive security structure remains intact to avoid bedlam in the streets and mass migration to the U.S.”

The Cuban government issued a statement that the meeting allowed Cuban officials to “demonstrate categorically that Cuba does not represent a national security threat to the United States, nor that legitimate reasons exist to include it in the list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism.”

Hours after news of the visit surfaced, CBS News reported that the U.S. is taking steps to indict Raúl Castro for the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes, three months after Cuban-American hardliners from Florida urged the Trump administration to do exactly that.

The indictment appears to echo the Maduro playbook — fabricating far-fetched criminal charges to provide legal justification for a military attack. It also seems designed to appease Cuban-American hardliners even as Trump signals openness to talks and other Republicans express reluctance about another military intervention in the wake of the U.S. war against Iran.

Mixed Signals

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told The Hill the administration’s immediate focus remained Iran and “trying to get the Strait of Hormuz opened up.” Meanwhile, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) warned against military action.

In an apparent response to the report, Trump posted on his Truth Social feed: “No Republican has ever spoken to me about Cuba.” He went on to write that Cuba is “heading in one direction - down!” He added that “Cuba is asking for help, and we are going to talk!!!”

According to NBC News, Trump “has grown increasingly frustrated with the Cuban government's ability to maintain power” and has been “pressing his advisers” about why collapse hasn’t happened yet.

While administration officials believe the Cuban government will fall before the end of the year, Trump “has found that timeline insufficient.”

NBC also reports that in response to Trump’s frustration, the Defense Department has begun updating plans for a possible military action against Cuba. However, administration officials are reportedly leery of a military intervention in Cuba on the heels of Iran.

Miami Hardliners Push for Military Action

Cuban-American politicians, by contrast, continue to beat the war drums.

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) responded to Trump’s post on X by declaring that South Florida Republicans were “waiting” for him to “take the necessary action” to “free Cuba after 67 years of oppression.” She added: “We are waiting for you to give the order. And it will be done. With Marco Rubio leading the way.”

Speaking aboard Air Force One on Wednesday, Rubio said that “you cannot change the economic trajectory of Cuba” under its current leadership and “that’s what’s going to have to change,” before adding, “I hope I’m wrong. We’ll give them a chance. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Meanwhile, at a congressional appropriations hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on whether he considered Cuba a national security threat.

“I do,” Hegseth responded.

More than 30 Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL), sent a letter to Trump Tuesday urging the administration to rule out military action against Cuba. “Such action would be illegal, deeply destabilizing and catastrophic for the Cuban population,” the letter said. “It must be unequivocally rejected.” The letter also called for an end to the use of Guantánamo Bay for migrant detention.

Rubio's Cynical Aid Charade

At the Vatican last Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the self-proclaimed architect of Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign against the island, claimed the U.S. had offered Cuba $100 million in humanitarian aid, but the Cuban government allegedly refused to “distribute it to the people."

On Wednesday, the State Department reiterated Rubio’s offer, which would be distributed through the Catholic Church and other humanitarian organizations.

Rubio’s $100 million offer rings hollow. The U.S. has yet to deliver much of a far smaller aid package promised months ago. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to impose an oil blockade that has slowed aid deliveries and deepened the hardship suffered by the Cuban people.

The Trump administration took three months to begin delivering $3 million in pledged aid (around 4% of what the UN estimated Cuba needed) after Hurricane Melissa devastated eastern Cuba last October. The U.S. announced an additional $6 million in aid in February, four months after the storm. Last week, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernández de Cossío said that only $2.5 million worth of “bags of food and toiletries” from the initial package had arrived, while the additional $6 million was still pending.

One possible reason for the delay is the Trump administration’s insistence on bypassing the one entity in Cuba capable of delivering large amounts of humanitarian aid: the Cuban government.

Meanwhile, the U.S. oil blockade is playing a role in preventing aid from being delivered, according to Francisco Pichón, a UN official in Cuba.

Even if fully implemented, Rubio’s $100 million aid offer would pale in comparison to the billions of dollars in annual losses Cuba says are caused by U.S. sanctions. It is also unclear whether the aid could realistically be distributed at scale through the Church and private NGOs alone.

“The best aid that the U.S. government could provide to the noble Cuban people at this or any time is to de-escalate the measures of the energy, economic, commercial and financial blockade,” Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez posted Thursday.

As the U.S. plays politics with aid, other countries have been stepping up. Last October, a Vietnamese Red Cross campaign raised more than $20 million through over 2 million individual donations. On Monday, Japan donated $6.5 million to install solar panels across ten hospitals on the island. Last month, Mexico donated $34 million to support Cuba’s farmers, while China contributed $80 million in electrical equipment and rice. Earlier this year, Canada and Spain pledged $6.7 million and $1.1 million, respectively.

Solidarity Over Hostility

Forty years after Reverend Jesse Jackson traveled to Cuba at the height of the Cold War, his son, Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) returned to Havana carrying a similar message: solidarity over hostility.

Watch our video about Rep. Jackson's visit HERE.

During his visit, Rep. Jackson traveled to Havana’s Martin Luther King Center (CMLK), where he paid tribute to his late father’s historic 1984 trip.

Jesse Jackson met with Fidel Castro during the height of the Cold War and mediated the release of 22 U.S. citizens imprisoned in Cuba, along with 26 Cuban prisoners, in what was widely viewed as an olive branch toward normalizing relations between the two longtime adversaries.

“It’s my prayer that the historical and political differences that divide us would not be used to deny our children the kind of future they deserve,” said Rep. Jackson during his recent visit.

Earlier this week, Rep. Jackson and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who also visited Havana, authored a New York Times guest essay titled “What We Saw in Cuba Shocked Us.”

Cuban Americans: "Rubio Doesn't Speak for Me”

For decades, politicians in Washington and Miami have claimed to speak for the Cuban-American community, creating a narrative to justify a policy of regime change through economic starvation.

But a growing movement of Cuban Americans is pushing back.

In the latest installment of our series U.S. Voices Against the Blockade, we meet Justine Medina, a Cuban American who grew up in Florida, the epicenter of anti-Cuba rhetoric.

Watch our video with Justine HERE.

“Monsters Against Their Own People”

Dr. Gloria Caballero Roque grew up sharing a single room with four siblings in Old Havana with no running water. She would go on to earn two PhDs in the United States, a journey she credits to Cuba’s free education and universal healthcare.

In an interview with Belly of the Beast journalist Liz Oliva Fernández, Gloria reflects on her journey from Cuba to the United States and explains how U.S. sanctions disproportionately harm Black Cubans.

According to Gloria, Cuban-American hardliners like Marco Rubio have become "monsters against their own people.”

“They can't forgive not being the owners of that small island,” she said.

For early access to Liz’s interview with Gloria: Join Our Patreon!

Who’s Spying on Whom?

While the Trump administration has alleged — without evidence — that U.S. adversaries are using Cuba to spy on the United States, a recent CNN analysis shows that the U.S. may be the one doing the spying.

Since early February, the U.S. military has intensified intelligence-gathering flights operating provocatively close to Cuba’s coastline, with at least 25 flights identified so far. Both manned aircraft and high altitude surveillance drones flew as close as 40 miles off Cuba’s coast, repeatedly circling near Havana and Santiago de Cuba, the island’s two largest cities.

The U.S. Air Force and Navy’s P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft and MQ-4C Triton drone circling Cuba are the same military hardware used to monitor the war in Ukraine. They were also deployed ahead of recent U.S. military operations in Iran and Venezuela.

Former U.S. Navy commander José Adán Gutiérrez told the New York Times that the visibility of the surveillance flights was unusual, noting that "the fact that these flights were purposely made public basically indicates that there is a message."

Chris Simmons, a former Defense Intelligence Agency counterintelligence officer specializing in Cuba, added that such measures were unnecessary against a country with limited naval capabilities, describing the flights as more a “demonstration of force than anything else.”

Marco Rubio has repeatedly accused Cuba of hosting foreign spy bases. For years, he claimed China was operating spy bases on the island.

More recently, Trump justified his executive order imposing an oil blockade on Cuba by alleging that the island “hosts Russia’s largest overseas signals intelligence facility, which tries to steal sensitive national security information from the United States.”

Cuba’s Soviet-era Lourdes signals intelligence facility was closed in 2002, and has since been converted into the University for Information Sciences. The elusive Chinese spy bases, meanwhile, remain as difficult to locate as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“No Military Solution”: UN Chief Slams U.S. Sanctions

Speaking at the UN Africa-France summit in Nairobi, Kenya, UN Secretary General António Guterres condemned the U.S. government’s economic war on Cuba.

Slamming U.S. sanctions as a “violation of international law,” Guterres pushed back against escalating war rhetoric in Washington and Miami. “There is no military solution that can be sought for Cuba,” said Guterres.

Guterres’s remarks are in line with the longstanding international consensus at the United Nations. Since 1992, the UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly ever year to condemn the U.S. blockade.

Watch our video of Latin American leaders calling for an end to the blockade at last year’s UN General Assembly.

As War on Cuba Escalates, Companies Settle Lawsuits

Title III defendants are dropping like flies.

American Airlines and Spanish hotel chain Iberostar are the latest corporations to settle lawsuits filed under Title III of the Helms Burton Act, a controversial provision that had been suspended by every U.S. president for over two decades until Trump activated it in 2019.

Title III allows U.S. claimants whose property was nationalized after the 1959 Cuban Revolution to sue companies for doing business on that property. Read our in-depth article about how Florida hardliners got Title III implemented to crush investment in Cuba.

The recent settlements come in the wake of the first jury verdict in favor of a Title III plaintiff. Last year, a federal jury in Miami found Expedia liable for nearly $30 million in damages to Cuban-American Mario Echevarría, who claimed his family owned the small island of Cayo Coco off northern Cuba, where Expedia, Hotels.com and Orbitz booked hotel stays.

Although the judge later took the unusual step of overturning the verdict and entering judgment for Expedia, the jury decision may have spooked other Title III defendants.

Jacksonville-based Crowley Maritime settled claims last February over its use of Cuba’s Port of Mariel. The U.S. branch of French shipping company CMA CGM followed in November, with Seaboard Marine of Miami settling earlier this January.

Rising Gas Prices as Russian Tanker Stalls

The Russian-flagged tanker Universal, carrying 270,000 barrels of desperately needed diesel fuel, has reportedly stalled in the middle of the Atlantic, 1,000 miles from the island, according to publicly available ship-tracking data. This potential lifeline is being throttled just as Cuba's energy crisis reaches a breaking point under the intensified oil blockade. The Universal was scheduled to dock in Cuba on April 29.

The Universal represents the only attempt to deliver fuel since the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin docked in Cuba’s northern port of Matanzas on March 31 with 730,000 barrels of crude.

Before that, the island had gone three months without receiving a single significant oil delivery as the U.S. stopped fuel from reaching the island, a blockade that was formalized with Trump’s January 29 executive order threatening tariffs on countries exporting oil to Cuba.

The Cuban people are paying the price.

Cuba’s Ministry of Finance and Prices announced Tuesday that gasoline prices will begin fluctuating with international import costs. Officials said prices will now reflect freight, insurance, supply routes and volatility on the global market.

On Wednesday, Havana experienced blackouts lasting up to 22 hours as temperatures topped 32°C (90°F), prompting protests in parts of the capital.

The Cuban Electric Union (UNE) reported Thursday severe electric outages across the entire eastern region of the island.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the energy situation “tense,” warning of a 2,000 MW shortfall during Wednesday’s peak nighttime demand.

“We have absolutely no fuel, we have absolutely no diesel,” said Cuba’s Minister of Energy and Mines Vicente de la O Levy on Wednesday.

De la O Levy said the 100,000 tons of oil that arrived in Cuba from Russia at the end of March “have already been exhausted.” He added that once the Russian crude had been processed, “the hours of impact decreased considerably.” In regions such as Havana, this led to “several days with no blackouts.”

Watch our video as Cubans speak out against the human cost of Trump’s oil blockade and the “collective punishment” of their country HERE.

Cuban Tourism Under “Force Majeure”

The 41st Cuban International Tourism Fair (FITCUBA2026) is being held virtually this week, a decision driven by the island’s acute fuel crisis and the impact of the ongoing U.S. oil blockade.

Once a primary engine of the Cuban economy, the tourism sector saw arrivals plummet by nearly 50% in the first quarter of 2026 as travelers increasingly avoided an island grappling with the U.S.-induced power outages. While Cuba welcomed 4.8 million visitors in 2018, the hardening of U.S. policy under the “maximum pressure” campaign saw that number fall to just 1.8 million last year.

On May 10, Cubana de Aviación, Cuba’s state-run airline, announced the immediate suspension of all flights between Spain and Cuba. The airline cited “force majeure” risks linked to Trump’s May 1 executive order, which grants Secretary of State Marco Rubio sweeping authority to sanction third party entities operating in virtually any sector of the Cuban economy.

This pressure has also affected international operators such as Meliá Hotels International. The Spain-based group, which manages more than 14,000 hotel rooms in Cuba, has cut its operations by around 50 percent, finding in its quarterly investor report that Q1 performance “has been significantly compromised as a consequence of the United States' intervention in the region at the beginning of the year.” Meliá Hotels attributed their downturn to the “energy blockade” and “cancellations by airlines” due to an inability to refuel in Cuba.

While U.S. citizens remain legally barred from visiting the island for tourism, Washington has been using Cuba’s designation as a “state sponsor of terrorism” to discourage European travelers. This baseless listing strips citizens from 42 countries, including major tourism markets like Spain and Germany, of their U.S. visa waiver privileges. Consequently, a vacation in Havana may require European travelers to undergo a lengthy and uncertain in-person visa process at a U.S. embassy if they seek to travel to the United States in the future.

Watch our video on how U.S. law punishes European tourists for visiting Cuba.

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