They Lost Their Homes in Cuba to the Communist Government. Will They Ever Get Them Back?

Teo A. Babún, Jr., has fond memories of the large blue and white corner house in Santiago de Cuba where his grandmother, a wealthy matriarch in pre-revolutionary Cuba, hosted family gatherings for her eight children and 21 grandchildren.

The Babúns were industrialists who, like about 200,000 other affluent Cubans, fled the island after Fidel Castro took power. The Babúns left behind a railroad, sawmill, shipyard and cement factory — and the grand estate called “La Mesquita.”

For a time, Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother and the former president, lived there. Nearly seven decades later, the Cuban government uses it to house an Arab civic association.

Known as “Casa del Arabe,” the house, which includes a restaurant, is among thousands of properties seized by the Communist government from people who left Cuba, some with just the clothes on their backs, and never received compensation.

Cuba’s system appears to be on the edge of collapse, and the United States government is eager to hasten the fall.

As the two sides negotiate in secret, a decades-old thorny issue has resurfaced: the untold billions of dollars’ worth of homes, factories, farms, sugar mills and other businesses confiscated in the years after a socialist revolution nationalized businesses and instituted sweeping land policies.