The FII Priority Summit kicked off Wednesday morning in Miami with an unlikely blend of South Beach glamor, Saudi money, and a bold prediction that the Cuban government will fall “in the next few weeks.”

A small offshoot of the flagship extravaganza in Riyadh, known as the “Davos in the Desert,” the conference always attracts the elite of global finance and a wide range of government leaders. Despite the range of characters in attendance, it usually hews to apolitical topics, staying well inside the bounds of polite conversation so as to avoid jeopardizing business deals, especially from event backer Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s main sovereign wealth fund.

Not so, in Miami this year.

Multi-hyphenate Francis Suarez – the former mayor of Miami, partner at law firm Quinn Emanuel, recently appointed president of asset manager Alpha Wave Global, and, he hinted, soon to be appearing in a new media role (TV news personality?) – praised the FII for holding its events in Miami and touted his city’s role as a gateway to Latin America. Interviewed by his childhood friend Jose Felix Diaz, of lobbying firm Ballard Partners, it didn’t take long before the conversation shifted toward the profound changes underway in the Caribbean at the moment.

The Cuban government will fall “in the next few weeks,” Suarez told his audience in the Faena Hotel’s glitzy cabaret. A close confidant of fellow Cuban-American Marco Rubio, Suarez is eager to see the regime fall, the remnants of Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution that made his grandfather a political prisoner and has driven decades of Cuban immigration to Florida, 90 miles from Havana.

Miami has long benefited from political instability elsewhere in Latin America, Suarez told the audience. “That’s what makes the city counter-cyclical,” he said. Trouble in Central and South America has seen some of the region’s best and brightest flee to Miami, turning it into the financial gateway to Latin America. But Trump – driven by Rubio – is pursuing a policy geared toward greater hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, attempting to create a bloc of one billion people across the Americas who can serve as a counterweight to China, he said. Fomenting regime change in Venezuela and Cuba is key to the plan. For his part, Suarez said he is eager to visit the island that he has never been able to set foot on.

I, your correspondent, have seen it first-hand. In 2023, when Venezuelan oil was still arriving, albeit sporadically, I visited Cuba. Driving outside of Havana in a Soviet rental car, it didn’t take long to discover that the few gas stations along highways were either empty, or rationing fuel – when we did find gas, we could only buy a liter at a time. There were few other cars along the immaculately paved highways, but there were plenty of Cubans standing alongside waving fistfuls of nearly worthless pesos, hoping to catch a ride.

Now, after invading Venezuela on 3 January, the US has completely cut off oil deliveries to Cuba, a country that was already suffering from chronic shortages. Under the intense stress of the embargo, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has visibly lost weight – and it’s not GLP-1s, Suarez joked. (“It’s Trump-1, his interviewer snickered).

It was a very different kind of conversation around Cuba at FII’s Riyadh event in October. There, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz shared the stage with the geriatric president of Equatorial Guinea, just as Hurricane Melissa swept through his island. Previously the country’s Tourism Minister, Cruz talked up the need for humanitarian assistance and the wonders Cuba offers as a tourist destination. Politics were never discussed.

What would regime change in Cuba look like? We don’t have to look far to find out.

One head-spinning example came when Suarez left the stage and Delcy Rodriguez appeared onscreen, pitching Venezuela as a hub for investment in Latin America. The audience audibly gasped to see her giving a version of the pitch she has been making to investors and oil company executives in Caracas in recent weeks. The acting president made no mention of her predecessor, spirited away to a Brooklyn jail cell this February when US troops blasted through his Cuban security detail and left Rodriguez in charge.

Venezuela is changing its laws to encourage foreign energy investors to return. With a slightly amateurish slide deck (the junior government associates in Caracas clearly haven’t been given access to AI tools just yet), Rodriguez extolled the country’s abundant mineral wealth and encouraged the FII audience to come to Venezuela to see the opportunities for themselves. It was a pitch that sounded pretty much like every other self-promoting start-up founder, fund manager, bank president or head of state who comes to FII.

Unthinkable just months ago, it’s suddenly possible to imagine Cuba opening up to the world, at least from the vantage point of South Beach.

The conference will close out Friday afternoon with an address from one more self-promoting head of state. When Donald Trump takes the stage, it’s not clear whether he’ll pick up the thread from Suarez and Rodriguez, focus on the more pressing question of his war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, or stick to pitching investment opportunities. In one sense, it doesn’t matter. At FII Miami, it’s all the same people, and they’re all in the room.