I think you are applying your ethos to the situation and naively thinking the Castro's use a similar one. the recent incident with the boat and a thousand other barbaric events show that to be delusion and folly.
I think you're attacking a strawman. I have
never tried to imply that the Castros think like me. I never stated that they'd stop with the barbaric events, especially immediately. I've never said that 'reforming' Cuba would be anything but a long hard road.
In order to effect change, you have to have influence. In order to build influence, you have to have interaction. We have 'no' interaction with Cuba or the Castros(other than dozens of assassination attempts back in the day, making us a joke), which eliminates our influence.
Note that I'm staying away from using the word 'control' because that would be too strong for this situation. We would control Cuba about like our controlling North Korea. But we would have influence.