Granma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, featured a speech from figurehead “President” Miguel Díaz-Canel on the top of its front page on Wednesday in which he declared that Cuba would “fight and resist” the U.S., shortly after Cuban forces allegedly engaged in a shootout with a Florida speedboat.
The Cuban regime’s Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday evening that Cuban Coast Guard officials allegedly fired on a U.S.-registered speedboat, killing four people and detaining at least six others. Cuban state outlets later identified the names of the six individuals and branded them “terrorists” who allegedly sought to attack the rogue communist regime.
At press time, the incident remains largely unclarified, with no additional details surfacing from U.S or Cuban officials. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that the administration of President Donald Trump is working to verify the facts surrounding the alleged shootout. Rubio was participating in a meeting with leaders of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) bloc in St. Kitts and Nevis at the time of the incident.
“We will know quickly many more facts about this incident than we know right now. The majority of the facts being publicly reported are those by the information provided by the Cubans,” Rubio told reporters on St. Kitts and Nevis. “We will verify that independently.”
“I don’t know who has possession of the vessel, which is the first thing we want to have. We obviously want to have access to these people if they are American citizens or U.S. residents,” Rubio added. “But I’m not going to speculate now because right now, still a lot of the information that’s out there is information that’s been provided by the Cubans. We are going to verify that information independently and reach our own conclusions.”
At the time the Cuban regime announced the alleged incident, Granma’s front page featured a transcription of a speech figurehead “President” Díaz-Canel delivered on Tuesday. He originally delivered his remarks at the Cuban Capitol this week to mark a new anniversary of the February 24, 1895, start of the Cuban war of independence — a historic date unrelated to the rise of communism in Cuba that the Castro regime has coopted for their own to exalt the rise of late dictator Fidel Castro to power in 1959. Notably, the Castro regime does not celebrate the actual date of the founding of the Republic of Cuba, May 20. The ruling communists also marked Tuesday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of what the communist regime refers to as the “local organs of the People’s Power.”
During the speech Díaz-Canel proclaimed, “We will fight, we will struggle, we will resist, we will transform, and despite all adversities and imperial threats, we will grow and we will prevail.”
The Cuban Coast Guard’s reported shootout with an alleged U.S.-registered speedboat surfaced amid rising tensions between the two countries after the rogue communists found themselves abruptly cut off from their virtually free access to Venezuelan oil following the United States’ January 3 law enforcement operation in Caracas that resulted in the arrest of dictator Nicolás Maduro. Maduro was for many years a crucial benefactor and ideological “pupil” of the Cuban communists, wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narco-terrorism charges. At press time, the already struggling rogue communists appear not to have found a solution to their loss of Venezuelan oil, which they greatly depended on to subsist over the past two decades.
In late January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order addressing the threats to U.S. national security posed by the Castro regime — who turned Cuba into a state sponsor of terror throughout the 67 years that it has been in power. The executive order also called for the imposition of tariffs on countries that provide oil to Cuba.
“Cuba does not attack or threaten. We have stated this repeatedly and we reiterate it today: Cuba will defend itself with determination and firmness against any terrorist or mercenary aggression that seeks to undermine its sovereignty and national stability,” Díaz-Canel wrote on a Thursday morning social media post.
The Cuban regime’s announcement of the alleged incident on Wednesday occurred hours after the Cuban diaspora and dissidents marked the 30th anniversary of the Castro regime’s killing of four Americans in 1996. The four individuals killed — Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales — were members of Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that carried out humanitarian flight operations in the 1990s to rescue Cubans who found themselves adrift at sea while trying to flee from communism. On February 24, 1996, the Cuban regime shot the Brothers to the Rescue planes down in international waters, killing the four Americans.
Last week, Breitbart News contributor and coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance (ARC) Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat renewed the Cuban diaspora’s calls for a criminal prosecution of Cuba’s communist dictator Raúl Castro by U.S. authorities for his role in the 1996 killing of the four Brothers to the Rescue Americans. ARC held a vigil on Tuesday, February 24, to honor the four killed Americans and to demand justice and Castro’s prosecution.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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