On Wednesday morning (2/25), in the midst of sharpening US imperialist strangulation of Cuba, a Florida-registered speedboat comprised of anti-government Cuban nationals traveled to Cuba’s coast and opened fire on the Cuban Border Guard when attempting to approach the speedboat for identification, with the exchange of gunfire resulting in four dead and six wounded exiles.
According to the Cuban interior ministry, the exiles were planning “an infiltration with terrorist aims.” The speedboat was carrying ten heavily armed individuals, seven of which have been identified by Cuban authorities. Two of the detained were previously wanted in Cuba for involvement in terrorism.
The weaponry seized on the boat include “assault rifles, handguns, improvised explosive devices (Molotov cocktails), body armor, telescopic sights, and camouflage uniforms,” the Cuban interior ministry revealed in a statement Wednesday.
Furthermore, Cuban national Duniel Hernández Santos was arrested in Cuba, and confessed to being sent from the US to assist the speedboat’s arrival on Cuban land.
Misael Ortego Casanova, the brother of a would-be terrorist killed in the attack, told monopoly media that his brother had fallen into an “obsessive and diabolical” desire to overthrow the Cuban government.
This attack comes in the midst of amplified US aggression against Cuba in the form of intensifying the long-standing blockade on Cuba through imposing new tariffs. The Trump administration in an executive order imposing the tariffs stated, “Cuba constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat… to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
This is the second time this year that Cuban troops have been in armed confrontation with Americans. In the January 3 US imperialist kidnapping of President Maduro and First Lady Flores, 32 Cubans defending Venezuela from US aggression were killed.
Anti-Cuban extremist and ultra-reactionary Marco Rubio on 2/25 denied US involvement in the attack which he called “unusual,” before continuing his rhetoric for regime change. The incident took place at the same time as US imperialism has blocked virtually all oil shipments to the oppressed island nation. The economic strangulation of the Cuban people is designed to effect an overthrow of the Cuban state in the interest of installing lackeys of US imperialism.
US state involvement in direct terrorist infiltration of and attack on Cuba has precedence, the most famous of which was the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, carried out by Cuban exiles loyal to US imperialism at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency. The attack was quickly repelled by the Cubans and blew up in the face of the imperialists by uniting the people against them and through condemnation of the attack around the world.
While such plots have occurred with less frequency in recent years, US imperialism is ratcheting up its armed interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean with the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in a desperate effort to defend its sole hegemony over the world.
For more information on Cuba, see the document “MPP: Cuba Yes, Yankees No! Yankees Go Home!” appearing here on VND-Peru.
Image: A Cuban Border Guard Vessel. Credit: Cuban Embassy in US.
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