For months as the US navy ready to strike Venezuela, many Cubans have requested me a easy, if disconcerting, query: “Are we next?”
Following the devastating assaults on Venezuelan navy bases and surgical apprehension of leader Nicolás Maduro by US Special Forces, Cuba appears very a lot in the Trump administration’s sights.
Maduro’s seize is a seismic reversal of fortune for Cuba’s communist-run authorities, which for many years has relied on huge help packages from its oil-rich South American ally for the island’s very survival.
At a protest Saturday in entrance of the US Embassy in Havana, a defiant Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel promised to not let the Cuba-Venezuela alliance go down and not using a struggle.
“For Venezuela, of course for Cuba, we are willing to give even our own life, but at a heavy cost,” Diaz-Canel proclaimed.
But if something, the Cubans I’ve spoken with since the strikes appeared shocked by how straightforward it appeared for the US navy to grab Maduro with none loss of US personnel.
“For decades, first (former Venezuelan leader Hugo) Chavez and then Maduro warned of a US intervention,” mentioned one Havana resident, who didn’t need their title used. “But when it finally happened, no one was ready for it. The Venezuelans had billions of dollars to equip their military. We don’t.”
The assault on Venezuela seems to have already come at a heavy value for Cuba, as President Donald Trump advised the New York Post on Saturday, “You know, many Cubans lost their lives last night. … They were protecting Maduro. That was not a good move.”
The Cuban authorities, in a post on Facebook on Sunday, mentioned 32 of its residents have been killed throughout the operation “in combat actions, performing missions on behalf of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior, at the request of counterparts of the South American country.” The authorities declared two days of mourning.
It would seem like the first time in a long time the former Cold War-era foes engaged in fight.
And it appears to substantiate what has lengthy been suspected: Maduro’s internal circle of bodyguards have been Cuban. Foreign diplomats stationed in Caracas reported to me for years that Maduro’s private safety spoke Spanish in Cuban accents and that Maduro, who studied in Havana in his youth, typically trusted Cuban advisers over his personal individuals.
Now, Maduro’s seize places in danger a decadeslong alliance that saved Cuba from complete financial destroy following the collapse of its former financial patron, the Soviet Union.
For years, first Chavez after which Maduro despatched billions of dollars’ worth of oil to prop up the Cuban authorities in alternate for a seemingly unending stream of Cuban intelligence and financial advisers and well being care professionals.
Chavez, earlier than his death from cancer in 2013 following months of remedy in Cuban hospitals, declared Cuba and Venezuela weren’t two nations however la gran patria – the one homeland.
Over the years as I traveled frequently between Cuba and Venezuela, it was exhausting to inform the place one nation started and one other ended. I as soon as came across a detachment of Venezuelan troopers constructing a bridge in the Cuban province of Guantanamo. When I requested how lengthy that they had been there, the Venezuelan official in cost, annoyed at the lack of provides, barked at me “Too long!”
More typically than not, once I visited clinics in the poorest slums of Caracas, I encountered Cuban docs working there. One time whereas protecting the political upheaval in Venezuela, my cameraman and I have been detained for 4 hours in the sizzling solar by Venezuela’s feared secret police, the Sebin.
They threatened to interrogate and mistreat us for being American spies however then abruptly allow us to go after coming throughout my Cuban resident ID card.
After Chavez died, official mourning was declared throughout Cuba to the diploma that singing was banned that day in my then-2-year-old daughter’s preschool in Havana.
Cuba then declared Chavez to be the island’s most stalwart ally since the Cuban revolution and granted him Cuban citizenship, making him the solely foreigner to obtain that designation since Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
But the symbiotic Venezuelan-Cuban partnership is going through unprecedented strain in the second Trump administration and should quickly be at a breaking level. Invoking a brand new Monroe Doctrine, Trump has vowed to not tolerate nations in the Western Hemisphere with pursuits and aims that run opposite to that of the United States.
“The rapid success of US military operations to oust Maduro can only empower the regime-changers in the Trump administration to put other Latin American nations in their crosshairs, starting with Cuba,” Peter Kornbluh, the coauthor of the ebook “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana,” advised NCS.
The elevated bellicosity couldn’t come at a worse second for Cubans.
Already, on most days a lot of the island is plunged into prolonged blackouts as a result of of an absence of gasoline and getting older energy vegetation that break down with growing frequency. On every government-run tv newscast, an official seems to debate the outlook of the worsening energy state of affairs as in the event that they have been predicting the climate. Shortages of meals, as soon as assured by a authorities rationing system, are threatening to push tens of millions of Cubans nearer to malnutrition.
In December, a authorities commentator on state-run TV raised hackles from many on the island when he suggested Cubans to surrender consuming rice.
“We live in a state of war without war,” a Cuban pal advised me weeks in the past.
But the precise risk of navy intervention could quickly be coming as the finish of the alliance with Venezuela would go away Cuba the most remoted it’s been since the fall of the Soviet Union.
For regime-change hawks in the Trump administration, the alternative to lastly remove a foe simply 90 miles from the United States might show irresistible.
It’s unclear whether or not threats alone will suffice in forcing Havana to offer in to US strain and launch political prisoners and maintain multi-party elections.
“There has never been a time when we have not faced the possibility of invasion,” one stone-faced Cuban official just lately advised me.