The grill‑strategy is starting to work. With every degree the heat rises, the situation in Cuba — both on the streets and in the regime’s top offices — becomes more and more unbearable. The fall earlier this year of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Havana’s key ally, and the subsequent energy embargo on the island marked the beginning of a decline that now seems unstoppable.
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The Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá used to say that he lived in the crossfire. In May 2002, he achieved the milestone of delivering more than 11,000 signatures to Cuba’s Parliament. The petition demanded a referendum to democratize the island.
© Norlys Perez (REUTERS)
About 50 people, some holding signs and Cuban flags, gathered Wednesday outside the iconic Versailles restaurant on Calle Ocho in Miami, a regular meeting point for the Cuban exile community. The atmosphere was celebratory. And besides commemorating the island’s independence, the occasion was the indictment of Raúl Castro.
© CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH (EFE)
When did Europe go wrong? For decades, we thought the European project would disappear due to external threats… but we never imagined that this would happen because of the irresponsibility of its leaders, nor because of the inaction of its citizens. Nobody thought that Europe would cease to be the horizon that the rest of the world aspires to reach.
Almost at the same time on Wednesday morning, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke from Washington while Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, spoke from Havana. Both were addressing the people of Cuba. The former highlighted the date, May 20, as the day “the Cuban flag flew for the first time over an independent country” in 1902, an image preserved in a period photograph that forever enshrined the birth of the republic. The latter, however, said that date should be credited for only one thing: “Having planted in Cubans of that era an anti-imperialist sentiment.” Rubio invoked 1902 as an epic moment, but Díaz-Canel asked the people not to forget that May 20 marks the day of U.S. “intervention” and “interference” in Cuba. That has been the narrative between Washington and Havana to this day: two governments wrestling over the meaning of history.
© Yamil Lage (AP)
Miguel Díaz-Canel grows emotional, raising his fist before hundreds of left-wing activists from Europe and Latin America gathered at Havana’s convention center, as seen in a video recorded days before a shipment of humanitarian aid arrived, while they chant, “Cuba is not alone.” On May 22, he is seen giving a military salute amid trumpets and Cuban pennants before thousands gathered at the so-called anti-imperialist platform between the U.S. embassy and the Malecón to show support for 94-year-old Raúl Castro, who has just been charged by a U.S. court for ordering the shooting down of two planes belonging to an anti-Castro organization in 1996, an attack that killed four people.
© Norlys Perez (REUTERS)
New winds of reform are sweeping through Havana. The Cuban regime on Friday announced a package of structural changes under the so-called Economic and Social Program for 2026 to confront one of the most severe crises in its recent history.
© Norlys Perez (REUTERS)
Between grandstanding, contradictory statements, and secret meetings, something is happening in Cuba. A path has opened that is still full of unknowns, but one that now seems hard to reverse. In recent days, events have accelerated with the unusual visit by the CIA chief to Havana, the U.S. indictment of Raúl Castro — the Cuban Revolution’s last great symbol — and the deployment of an aircraft carrier in Caribbean waters near the island.
© Ramon Espinosa (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
United States federal prosecutors announced today that they had indicted Raúl Castro, the former President of Cuba and brother of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, over the downing of two civilian planes in 1996.
The U.S. Justice Department has accused Castro, who was defense minister at the time of the incident, of ordering the Cuban Air Force to shoot down the planes.
The move ramps up pressure on the island, which Washington has subjected to a near-total oil blockade since January, and raises concerns that the U.S. is preparing an operation similar to the one that removed Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela earlier this year.
Today’s charges relate to the killing of four members of the Miami-based Cuban dissident group Hermanos Al Rescate (Brothers to the Rescue), who were operating the planes when they were shot down on February 24, 1996. Three were American citizens and one was a U.S. resident.
According to acting U.S. Attorney-General Todd Blance, Castro has been formally charged with conspiring to kill U.S. nationals.
The issue of whether or not the planes were shot down in Cuban or international airspace is still a matter of debate.
Florida’s Attorney-General had announced in March that a state investigation into Raúl Castro’s involvement would be reopened, a move which was endorsed by many Republican politicians, including Florida Senator Rick Scott.
Tensions between the U.S. and Cuba have been rising precipitously, as the North American superpower has enforced a near-total oil blockade on the island, ratcheted up punitive sanctions targeting Cuban officials and demanded in ongoing negotiations between the two countries that the current Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel step down.
Some have likened the charges brought against Castro to those directed at former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro before his capture earlier this year. Maduro was charged with drug trafficking in the U.S. in 2020, an accusation which served as justification for his forced removal from power by the U.S. military.
It remains to be seen whether the charges against Castro will result in a similar U.S. operation in Cuba.
Featured Image: Raúl Castro in 2016.
Image Credit: Presidencia de El Salvador via Wikimedia Commons
License: Creative Commons Licenses
The post US authorities indict Raul Castro, longtime Cuban leader appeared first on Latin America Reports.
When she first saw the news on Facebook, she thought it had to be one of those hoaxes that circulate on social media. It was too implausible, an absurdity. But shortly afterward the principal of the school where she works forwarded to the teachers’ group chat a message that opened with the classic tone of a war dispatch: Information from the Revolutionary Government. Then she had no doubts. The information was real. The CIA director had just met in Havana with the senior leadership of the Cuban security and intelligence apparatus.
United States federal prosecutors announced today that they had indicted Raúl Castro, the former President of Cuba and brother of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, over the downing of two civilian planes in 1996.
The U.S. Justice Department has accused Castro, who was defense minister at the time of the incident, of ordering the Cuban Air Force to shoot down the planes.
The move ramps up pressure on the island, which Washington has subjected to a near-total oil blockade since January, and raises concerns that the U.S. is preparing an operation similar to the one that removed Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela earlier this year.
Today’s charges relate to the killing of four members of the Miami-based Cuban dissident group Hermanos Al Rescate (Brothers to the Rescue), who were operating the planes when they were shot down on February 24, 1996. Three were American citizens and one was a U.S. resident.
According to acting U.S. Attorney-General Todd Blance, Castro has been formally charged with conspiring to kill U.S. nationals.
The issue of whether or not the planes were shot down in Cuban or international airspace is still a matter of debate.
Florida’s Attorney-General had announced in March that a state investigation into Raúl Castro’s involvement would be reopened, a move which was endorsed by many Republican politicians, including Florida Senator Rick Scott.
Tensions between the U.S. and Cuba have been rising precipitously, as the North American superpower has enforced a near-total oil blockade on the island, ratcheted up punitive sanctions targeting Cuban officials and demanded in ongoing negotiations between the two countries that the current Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel step down.
Some have likened the charges brought against Castro to those directed at former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro before his capture earlier this year. Maduro was charged with drug trafficking in the U.S. in 2020, an accusation which served as justification for his forced removal from power by the U.S. military.
It remains to be seen whether the charges against Castro will result in a similar U.S. operation in Cuba.
Featured Image: Raúl Castro in 2016.
Image Credit: Presidencia de El Salvador via Wikimedia Commons
License: Creative Commons Licenses
The post US authorities indict Raul Castro, longtime Cuban leader appeared first on Latin America Reports.
When a Cuban person on the island wants to refer to “those in charge,” they lightly tap their shoulder with two fingers. The subtle gesture, shaped by nearly seven decades of censorship, is a reference to the epaulet of a military uniform. In Cuba, people do not speak of the government or the party (the Communist Party of Cuba, the only legal one), but rather of the “country’s leadership.” It is a euphemism that points to the real political and economic power: the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).
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