Cuba has vowed to defend itself against any “terrorist and mercenary aggression”, a day after border guards said they had killed four exiles on a Florida-registered speedboat that opened fire on a patrol.
Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, wrote on X that the Caribbean country will “defend itself with determination and firmness” after the incident in which six other people on the boat were injured.
The incident has the potential to crank up tensions between Washington and Havana, which have been at at odds since US forces seized Cuba’s key ally, the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and the Trump administration imposed an oil blockade on the island in January.
But talks between the two countries are understood to continue, and both governments appeared keen to calm the situation. Díaz-Canel preceded his comments by writing: “Cuba does not attack nor threaten.”
On Thursday, the Miami Herald reported that US officials had met with former Cuban president Raúl Castro’s grandson, on the sidelines of Caricom, the annual meeting of Caribbean leaders, in St Kitts and Nevis.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, 41, does not have an official role in the Cuban government, but remains close to his grandfather, who holds huge sway in the country’s power structure.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who was attending the Caricom session, said the US government had nothing to do with the incident and told reporters: “We’re still gathering facts.”
But what facts there are remain sketchy.
The assault happened among a network of keys east of the tourist beach of Varadero off the island’s northern coast, according to Cuba’s ministry of the interior.
The boat, a small centre-console speedboat, appears to have come from the Florida Keys and was allegedly carrying arms.
One of the men who died, Michel Ortega Casanova, had spoken of wanting to liberate he island, an associate told AFP.
“His goal was to go and fight against a criminal and murderous narco-tyrannical [government], to see if that would spark the people to rise up,” said Wilfredo Beyra, head of the Cuban Republican party in Tampa.
There is a long history of exiles trying to spark uprisings against Cuba’s communist government. Cuban authorities said the occupants fired on the border guards when they were intercepted, injuring the Cuban commander and one guard.
The ministry of the interior said it had already picked up one further member of the group who had flown to the island to meet the boat, and who had “confessed”.
The boat appears to have been a 24ft Pro-Line, usually used to fish in coastal waters, and may have been stolen. To experts, it seems an ambitious craft to attempt a seaborne landing of Cuba, more than 90 miles away from Florida, given that the 10 occupants would have been a tight fit and the boat didn’t have a particularly powerful engine.
The Cuban authorities say the survivors were all Cuban residents in the US who now stand accused of intending to “carry out an infiltration for the purposes of terrorism”. The ministry also said they all had criminal records in Cuba, and were carrying assault rifles, handguns, molotov cocktails and other military-style gear.
Several of them were apparently being held at a hospital in Santa Clara, about 150 miles east of Havana, which was under heavy guard by interior ministry troops, Reuters reported.
“There is a lot of Sturm und Drang [over this] in Miami,” said a leading figure in the exile community.
There are also concerns among some exiles that US efforts at regime change will be damaged by such a freelance attack. “There are some corners of the Cuban exile community declaring two days of mourning,” said Michael Bustamante, chair of Cuban and Cuban-American studies at the University of Miami. “But I’ve also seen a lot of commentary sarcastically asking: ‘What the hell were these guys thinking?’
“There is a feeling that at the moment the US is clamping down and putting the Cuban government in the corner, this could actually give the Cuban government a lifeline.”
However, Bustamante went on to point out that “a maritime raid is how the Cuban revolution got started”. That boat, the Granma, which carried Fidel and Raúl Castro as well as Che Guevara and 79 others from Mexico in 1956, now sits in open display at Havana’s Museum of the Revolution.
