This time, the appropriately designated shoe had found itself on the other foot. While the Trump administration has been gorily killing personnel on alleged “narco-boats” and vessels supposedly heading to US shores laden with illicit drugs, Cuba had its turn at engaging a boat with “a known history of criminal and violent activity”.
On the morning of February 25, the speedboat in question was identified in Cuban territorial waters. Registered in Florida in the United States, it approached, according to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, “up to 1 nautical mile northeast of the El Pino channel, in Cayo Falcones, Corralillo municipality in the Villa Clara province.” When encountered by Cuba’s Border Guard Troops, those on board are said to have opened fire, injuring a commander.
The Cuban ministry of the interior noted the killing of “four aggressors on the foreign vessel”. Six were also injured and remain in custody. “The injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance.” The latter remark was almost mocking in nature, given the tendency by the US Navy to kill all aboard the alleged narco-boats.
Necessary comments about defending the sovereign integrity of the island were also made. “In the face of the current challenge, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region.”
The reaction from US authorities to this bit of medicine has been cagey and consistently hypocritical. Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed a preference not to trust the Cuban account, as did Florida Attorney General James Uthmeir. “The Cuban government cannot be trusted,” he grumbled in a social media post, “and we will do everything in our power to hold these communists accountable.” Rick Scott, Republican Senator from Florida, similarly declared that, “The Communist Cuban regime must be held accountable!”
Florida Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez complained about shifting narratives from Havana, a rich assertion given his government’s fable spinning tendencies on Caribbean drug boats, narco-terrorism and extra-judicial assassinations. “The original story was that they were transporting human smuggling and now they’re terrorists. They are changing their story and we need to get to the bottom of it.” He also questioned the nature of the vessel. “It is a 24-foot open fisherman with 1300 horsepower engine and ten people on it won’t go very fast.” In a post on X, Gimenez treated the armed boatmen as innocents “murdered” by the Cuban “dictatorship”.
Cuban suspicions are understandable and may prove plausible. As Cuban diplomat Bruno Rodríguez Parilla observed, his country had faced “numerous terrorist and aggressive infiltrations from the United States since 1959, with a high cost in lives, injuries, and material language.” Since the overthrow of the US-backed tyranny of Fulgencio Batista by Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries in 1959, the American military and political establishments have sought to meddle, isolate and starve the island population into submission. Attempts, none of which succeeded, were made on Castro’s life. (The staggering figure of 634 was suggested by retired agent Fabián Escalante.)
The old temptation towards regime change has never abated, despite the disastrous and failed effort by President John F. Kennedy to deploy CIA-trained exiled Cuban combatants at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. In sheer spite, he campaigned to have Cuba expelled from the Organisation of American States (OAS), something its members agreed to do in 1962.
Embargos became the norm, with the occasional hint at subversion and destabilisation. In 2003, for instance, the administration of George W. Bush created the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (CAFC) which recommended a program to overthrow the Castro government. (The formula proved dully familiar: fund dissidents and malefactors under the cover of establishing civil society; encourage foreign governments to distance themselves from Havana.)
This latest naval encounter has taken place against the backdrop of a renewed campaign by Washington to impose change on Havana. Irrespective of what those killed and captured on the Florida-registered vessel were destined to do, the muscular thuggery of the Donroe Doctrine articulated by US President Donald J. Trump does not envisage a communist state in the hemisphere. On January 29, the President issued an Executive Order declaring with pathological hyperbole “that the policies, practices and actions of the Government of Cuba constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” To carry out the order, tariffs would be “imposed on imports of goods that are products of a foreign country that directly or indirectly sells or otherwise provides any oil to Cuba.”
Most prominently targeted among those countries was Mexico. After the issuing of the order, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum warned that the measures “could trigger a far-reaching humanitarian crisis, directly affecting hospitals, food and other basic services for the Cuban people, a situation that must be avoided through respect for international law and dialogue between the parties.” Her particular concern was how oil could still be supplied under contract with Cuba via Pemex or continue as part of a humanitarian program. Over this month, a fleet-footed postponement strategy has taken shape, focusing on humanitarian emergency.
And a humanitarian emergency it most certainly is. On February 26, a bevy of international civil society organisations long present in Cuba, including Arci Culture Solidali, CARE Cuba and COSPE, released a statement “warning of a possible humanitarian collapse due to the lack of fuel supply to the country, placing the provision of essential services at risk.” Hospital services, emergency and intensive care, and “the cold chain for vaccines, blood, and medicines” had been compromised. The prices of goods had risen, production reduced, food security imperilled.
The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Cuba, Francisco Pichón, has also expressed concern about what will happen once the month-long contingency plan to cope with the fuel blockade ends. He offered a grim tale of vulnerability: the reliance of almost one million people on the water provided by tanker trunks; five million people living with chronic illness; thousands of cancer patients requiring continuous oncological care; the need for ongoing services for 32,000 pregnant women. “The risk to people’s lives is not rhetorical, those who suffer first and suffer most are ordinary people, especially the most vulnerable.”
On February 25, the US Department of Treasury slightly softened restrictions by announcing a “favourable licensing policy” that would permit companies seeking licenses to resell Venezuelan oil for use in Cuba. “This favourable licensing policy is directed towards transactions that support the Cuban people, including the Cuban private sector (e.g, exports for commercial and humanitarian use in Cuba).” This modest proposal will do little to distract the current administration from a goal it shares with every preceding government since Kennedy.
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