May 20, 2026 — Belly of the Beast

By Nicholas Greven

Violence — including terrorism — against Cuba has long been tolerated in Washington; Cuba’s response to it has not. That double standard is once again on full display as the Trump administration moves to indict former Cuban President Raúl Castro for the shoot-down of two planes 30 years ago — even as the U.S. military regularly blows up boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing nearly 200 people with impunity.

The 1996 downing of two Cessnas belonging to the Miami-based group Brothers to the Rescue was not a sudden or contextless act. It followed repeated provocations and incursions, numerous warnings, and the U.S. government’s refusal to restrain a political group openly seeking confrontation.

Presented in Miami and Washington as a long-overdue pursuit of accountability for the deaths of four men, the pending indictment rests on a familiar foundation: selective outrage, historical amnesia and legal exceptionalism.

From Rescue Missions to Provocation

Brothers to the Rescue was founded by José Basulto, a veteran of the botched Bay of Pigs invasion and CIA collaborator with a history of violent actions against Cuba. In 1961, Basulto was involved in a 1961 plot to bomb a missile base in Havana. A year later, he helped position a boat armed with a 20mm cannon off the coast of Havana and fired on the Hornedo de Rosita hotel, where he believed Fidel Castro would be dining.

“I was trained as a terrorist by the United States,” Basulto told the Miami Herald.

Brothers to the Rescue began in 1991 by flying search-and-rescue missions for Cuban rafters. But after a 1994 immigration accord sharply reduced the flow of migrants across the Florida Straits, the group shifted from rescue work to overt provocation. “They started…to carry out a political agenda of harassing and threatening the Cuban government,” recalled Richard Nuccio, then White House special advisor on Cuba. Brothers to the Rescue pilots repeatedly violated Cuban airspace, dropping religious medallions and anti-government leaflets over Havana, including one urging Cubans to “Change Things Now.”

​Image from the National Security Archive

Basulto was open about the flights’ purpose. After one 1995 flyover of Havana, he declared: “We want confrontation.” The mission, he said, was meant to show that “the regime is not invulnerable.”

The Cuban government repeatedly warned Washington that the flights were illegal and dangerous. Cuban officials filed diplomatic protests, sent evidence to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and made clear that if the incursions continued, Cuba could down the planes. U.S. officials knew the danger was real. In a January 1996 email, FAA official Cecilia Capestany informed her superiors that “one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes.”

​Image from the National Security Archive

Yet Washington failed to stop the flights. Cuban officials used every means of communication available: diplomatic notes, military briefings, intermediaries and back-channel contacts, to make clear their patience had run out.

On February 24, 1996, three Brothers to the Rescue Cessnas took off from Florida after filing a false flight plan claiming they were searching for rafters at sea. In reality, the mission was once again intended to penetrate Cuban airspace.

As the aircraft approached the island, Cuban controllers immediately warned the aircraft not to cross into their airspace. “You run danger by penetrating that side,” they replied.

“We are ready to do it,” Basulto responded. “It is our right as free Cubans.”

Not long after, Cuban fighter jets shot down two of the aircraft, killing all four men aboard. Basulto’s plane managed to return to Miami.

Weaponizing a Tragedy

The downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes was not only used to demonize Cuba. It also reshaped U.S. policy for decades.

Before the incident, the Clinton administration had been cautiously exploring limited openings with Havana. But after the planes were shot down, hardliners in Congress seized the moment. Inside the White House, some officials warned against overreaction. Brothers to the Rescue had “been playing with fire,” Richard Nuccio told senior adviser Sandy Berger. “They got exactly what they were hoping to produce.”

The warning went unheeded. Clinton quickly moved to support the Helms-Burton Act, which codified the U.S. embargo into law, and through its Title III, expanded its extraterritorial reach, allowing U.S. nationals to sue foreign companies accused of “trafficking” in property nationalized after the Cuban Revolution. Clinton and every president since him suspended Title III for more than two decades, until Trump activated the provision in 2019, unleashing dozens of lawsuits that resulted in an exodus of foreign investment from the island.

The Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down also became central to the prosecution of Gerardo Hernández, one of the Cuban Five, a group of operatives who were sent undercover to South Florida to monitor terrorist organizations linked to attacks against civilians in Cuba. In 1998, Cuban officials handed the FBI extensive documentation detailing dozens of U.S.-financed terrorist plots. The FBI responded by arresting the agents who had infiltrated the terrorist networks. Hernández was convicted in 2001, in a highly controversial trial, on conspiracy charges related to the Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down, despite no evidence that he participated in, ordered, or had foreknowledge of the decision to down the aircraft.

Nearly three decades later, the same incident is once again being weaponized to target Raúl Castro, stripped of the broader context in which it occurred. Missing from the Justice Department’s indictment is the long history of violent, Florida-based extremists targeting Cuba, which has continued into the present day.

Florida-Based Terrorism and Decades of Impunity

On February 25, 2026, a Florida-registered boat carrying ten armed men exchanged fire with the Cuban coast guard one mile off Cuba’s northern coast. According to Cuba’s Interior Ministry, the men opened fire first, injuring a Cuban commander. After the firefight, five of the men were killed, and the boat was seized, along with more than 12,000 rounds of ammunition, sniper rifles, molotov cocktails, bulletproof vests and night-vision equipment. All ten men on board were reportedly Cuban-born residents of the United States.

The incident was the latest episode in a decades-long campaign of armed attacks, sabotage and terrorism directed at Cuba from U.S. soil, often with impunity and, at times, tacit political protection in Miami and Washington.

Terrorists Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles lived freely in Miami until their deaths.

The most infamous example is Cubana Flight 455. Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles are widely believed to have masterminded the 1976 bombing of the civilian airliner, which exploded off the coast of Barbados, killing all 73 people on board. At the time, it was the deadliest act of airline terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. The victims included children and every member of Cuba’s national fencing team.

The FBI later described Bosch’s organization, CORU (Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations), as an “an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization,” while former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called Bosch an “unrepentant terrorist.” Posada Carriles was implicated in a long string of violent operations spanning decades, including a 1997 bombing campaign targeting hotels in Havana that killed an Italian tourist and injured several others.

Far from prosecuting Bosch and Posada Carriles, the United States ultimately shielded both men. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush allowed Bosch to remain in the country despite a 1989 Justice Department ruling that sought to deport him, citing “substantial proof concerning his past and present terrorist activities.” Posada Carriles, meanwhile, escaped from a Venezuelan prison while awaiting trial for the Cubana Flight bombing and later resurfaced in Central America during the Iran-Contra scandal. After illegally entering the United States in 2005, Posada Carriles was protected from extradition to Venezuela and Cuba and was never tried in the U.S. for the bombing of the Cubana flight.

Both Posada Carriles and Bosch lived freely in Miami until their deaths.

Miami is ground zero for the double standard driving U.S. policy toward Cuba. The Cuban-American hardliners who dominate the city’s politics have long espoused violence, terrorism and collective punishment against Cuba in the name of “freedom” and “human rights.” Unsurprisingly, the current push to indict Raúl Castro came three months after Cuban-American hardliners from Florida urged the Justice Department to do exactly that.

“This was a long thought-out thing that I wanted to do,” Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) told USA Today. “And I thought this is the president that would do it.”

Cuba on Trial, Washington Above the Law

The hypocrisy does not end at the Florida Straits. Since the turn of the century, the United States has bombed targets across multiple countries without declarations of war, without UN authorization and often with little regard for civilian victims. More recently, across the Caribbean and Pacific, the United States has carried out military strikes with a level of impunity that makes Cuba’s actions in 1996 look restrained by comparison.

While Washington and Miami prepare indictments against a 94-year-old man over a three- decade-old incident, the Trump administration has spent recent months executing people in boats in international waters with zero accountability. Since September 2025, the United States has launched nearly 60 military strikes against vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific under Operation Southern Spear, claiming to target “narco-traffickers” and “terrorist organizations.”

The operations have killed at least 193 people, in part due to tactics such as disguised military aircraft and “double tap” strikes on an already disabled vessel targeting survivors after an initial attack. Almost no evidence has been presented to the public. Satellite images are classified. Intercepts are withheld. Even the names of the dead are not released. Victims of U.S. firepower are seldom granted the dignity of public recognition.

These extrajudicial killings reflect a familiar double standard in U.S. foreign policy: that the United States’ own violence is legitimate while the violence of its adversaries is not, even in cases of self-defense.

Repackaging Regime Change as Justice

The pending indictment is not simply a means to settle a decades-old score; rather, it serves present foreign policy goals, aimed at transforming shaky criminal charges into a legal pretext for regime change and possibly military intervention.

According to NBC News, Trump “has grown increasingly frustrated with the Cuban government’s ability to maintain power” and has been “pressing his advisers” about why collapse has not yet happened despite unprecedented extraterritorial sanctions and an oil blockade that is causing a humanitarian crisis. While administration officials believe the Cuban government will fall before the end of the year, Trump “has found that timeline insufficient.”

With escalated economic warfare failing to bring about the Cuban government’s collapse, the Department of Defense is drafting plans for possible military action against Cuba.

The only missing piece is a legal pretext. The “narco-terrorism” charge used to justify the abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro cannot easily be applied to Cuba. For decades, the “consensus position” within the U.S. intelligence community has been that Cuba does not sponsor terrorism. Meanwhile, the State Department has long considered Cuba a key U.S. partner in counternarcotics cooperation.

The indictment against Castro would seem to provide a justification, albeit a flimsy one, for military action. Far from being the culmination of a long search for accountability, the case appears to lay the legal groundwork for a new and more violent phase in Washington’s siege on Cuba.

This article draws in part from the book “Back Channel to Cuba,” by William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, which provides a detailed account of the history surrounding the Brothers to the Rescue incident.

About the Author

Nicholas Greven holds a Masters degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and a Bachelors in U.S. & Latin American History from Indiana University, Bloomington. He is currently in law school at the City University of New York School of Law.

Havana, May 18 (Prensa Latina) A shipment of approximately 1,600 tons of food and personal hygiene items from Mexico and Uruguay arrived in Cuba today, in a gesture of solidarity amid the tightening of the US blockade.

Photo: Abel Rojas (FotosPL)

The Mexican ambassador to Cuba, Miguel Ignacio Díaz, reported that this is the eighth shipment of solidarity aid for the Cuban population and highlighted that the action responds to President Claudia Sheinbaum’s commitment to supporting the Cuban people in the face of the economic blockade imposed by Washington.

The aid comes from both the Mexican government and civil organizations, unions and social groups that organized from the Zócalo in Mexico City.

Uruguay joined the initiative by accepting Mexico’s invitation to ship its donations on the same vessel, given the difficulties some countries face in getting their aid to the island.

For his part, the Cuban Minister of the Food Industry, Alberto López, expressed the deep gratitude of the Cuban people to the government of Mexico, headed by President Claudia Sheinbaum, as well as to the government of Uruguay, for this humanitarian gesture.

“Each of these food items represents the affection and closeness of the Mexican and Uruguayan people towards Cuba, and they will be received with the utmost responsibility and respect, with the commitment that they reach those who need them most: our children, our elderly, and our most vulnerable homes,” the Cuban official stated.

López stressed that the products arrive at a time of great economic hardship, aggravated by the intensification of the criminal blockade that the country suffers from the United States government, and constitute a true example of international solidarity.

“From the bottom of our Cuban hearts, we express our deepest gratitude for this humanitarian gesture, which will be remembered as a true example of brotherhood between our nations. Thank you very much, Mexico; thank you very much, Uruguay. Your help is a life-giving embrace of hope for Cuba and the world,” the minister concluded.

Uruguay’s ambassador to Cuba, Juan Andrés Canessa, highlighted that the donated powdered milk is being delivered within the framework of the Strategic Cooperation Agreement with Mexico.

He added that the fund, created in 2023, demonstrates the continuity and urgent need for regional integration and solidarity.

“This is part of the broad solidarity that the Uruguayan people are showing towards Cuba,” said the diplomat, who thanked Havana for receiving the donation and Mexico for facilitating logistical support.

The welcoming ceremony was attended by officials from the Communist Party of Cuba, Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva, and several ministers from the Caribbean nation.

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May 15, 2026 — Belly of the Beast

For decades, politicians in Washington and Miami have claimed to speak for the Cuban-American community, creating a narrative to justify a policy of regime change through economic starvation.

But a growing movement of Cuban Americans is pushing back.

In the latest installment of our series U.S. Voices Against the Blockade, we meet Justine Medina, a Cuban American who grew up in Florida, the epicenter of anti-Cuba rhetoric.

Justin Medina is a barista and Cuban-American activist opposed to the embargo imposed by the U.S. government on Cuba, the island she considers her other homeland.

After multiple visits to Cuba, she says conditions have worsened: food shortages, scarcity of medicine and constant blackouts that make daily life harder.

According to Justine, this war, which has lasted 66 years and has intensified over time, only causes more suffering for the people. “I grew up hearing criticism of the Cuban government,” says Justine, who was raised in Florida. “But I also learned that the embargo should end.”

U.S. Voices Against the Blockade is a new series featuring Americans who oppose U.S. sanctions on Cuba. Watch Episode 3 to hear from Cuban-American activist Justine Medina and stay tuned to meet other U.S. activists who oppose the embargo.

Watch our video with Justine HERE.

Vatican City, May 17 (Prensa Latina) The Cuban ambassador to the Holy See, Leyde Rodríguez, highlighted today that the recent Holy Mass in the Vatican for the peace and development of his country demonstrated the positive bilateral ties.

• May 17, 2026

Regarding the liturgical celebration that took place on the night of May 15 at the Roman Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the diplomat told Prensa Latina that “we consider it an act of solidarity with the Cuban people in the difficult humanitarian conditions they face,” following an escalation of the aggressive policy of the United States.

Rodríguez noted that at the Holy Mass for Peace and Development in Cuba, officiated by Cardinal Michael Czerny, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the current context of threat against the territorial integrity of the island was denounced, given the aggressive nature of American imperialism.

“The Vatican has expressed its concern about the situation in Cuba and maintains a tradition of condemning the genocidal economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States against the island, aggravated after the signing by President Donald Trump of the executive orders of January 29 and May 1 of this year,” he stressed.

Cardinal Czerny emphasized in his homily the Vatican’s position in favor of “a disarmed and disarming peace,” which enables development, and that is why this mass had that name, for peace and for development in Cuba, which has always been the objective of our social project,” he noted.

The call of Pope Leo XIV was recalled, that “all international controversies and conflicts should be resolved peacefully, through negotiation and diplomacy, and not through the use of force, and that peace should be the result of dialogue, not wars,” he asserted.

The Holy See, he said, “has been very clear, both in the messages of the Supreme Pontiff and in statements by the Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin,” in pointing out that “it is Cuba that must resolve its problems among Cubans” while “it has opposed the use of force,” supporting dialogue and negotiation.

The ambassador stressed that “this first Holy Mass that has been organized reflects the positive diplomatic relations between Cuba and the Vatican, which will celebrate their 91st anniversary on June 7th, characterized by respect, mutual recognition, ethical and responsible diplomacy, with a constructive, frank and direct dialogue.”

“We agree on many issues on the current international agenda, such as respect for world peace, rejection of violence, preventive attacks, the use of force in conflict resolution, terrorism, as well as the need to eradicate poverty in the world.”

Both parties maintain a high level of concern for the preservation of the environment, the fight against climate change and its consequences, an issue that is precisely addressed by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

Furthermore, “it is necessary to highlight the importance that both the Holy See and Cuba attach to multilateralism, to the existence of a world order based on international law,” the Cuban ambassador added in his statements to this news agency.

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May 5, 2026 — Belly of the Beast

Imani Bashir is a Black American activist from Washington D.C. She visited to Cuba following a radical political tradition, one that includes Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, and Kwame Ture, figures who understood the Cuban Revolution as part of a broader struggle for liberation.

For Bashir, visiting Cuba wasn’t just political, it was personal. Seeing Afro-Cuban people, she says, was seeing people who look like her, who share her history, who have maintained their culture and dignity under decades of sanctions.

Her argument on the blockade is straightforward: Cuba has never been a threat to the United States. It has never put U.S. safety, its food supply, or resources at stake. “It has only been the other way around,” she says.

And on the U.S. government’s stated concern for the Cuban people: “I absolutely don’t think that the United States government wants to help the Cuban people, because the United States government doesn’t want to help the American people.”

U.S. Voices Against the Blockade is a series featuring U.S. citizens who oppose U.S. sanctions on Cuba. Watch Episode 2 and catch up on all previous episodes in the series.

May 9, 2026 — Belly of the Beast

As Washington doubles down on its economic war on Cuba, one young activist from Minneapolis packed his bag and flew to Havana. Lavish came not despite U.S. aggression, but because of it, to show solidarity with the Cuban people.

On International Workers’ Day, Lavish was joined by Josué, a young Cuban researcher who has been attending May Day marches since he was a child. The two come from different worlds, but found common ground in Havana.

​Watch our video with Lavish and Josué.

Chicago-born rapper Vic Mensa visited Cuba for the first time recently, and saw for himself the effects of the U.S. government’s economic war on the island.

Belly of the Beast’s Liz Oliva Fernández took a walk with him around Havana, where they talked about race, resistance and the pain inflicted by U.S. sanctions.

“From an American perspective, the pain of the world is often out of sight, out of mind,” he said.

Cuba didn’t just move Vic Mensa politically. It moved him personally, as a Black man, as a father as someone who carries both America and Africa inside him.

“What I like the most about this experience is seeing that there are Black people on this planet who can’t be broken,” he said.

Washington, May 8 (Prensa Latina) Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez reaffirmed that Cuba will safeguard its independence and stated that it “will exercise its right to legitimate self-defense to the very end, with the massive and overwhelming support of the people.”

In an interview with the American media outlet ABC News, the Foreign Minister was clear: “Cuba does not represent a threat to the United States: not to its national security, not to its foreign policy, not to its economy, not to the American way of life.”

“It appears that the United States government has chosen a dangerous path; a path that could lead to unimaginable consequences, to a humanitarian catastrophe, to genocide, to the loss of Cuban lives and young Americans; it could also lead to a bloodbath in Cuba,” he said.

Rodríguez stated that there has been no progress in the talks with the United States and dismissed the recent demands from the Donald Trump administration regarding political and economic reforms. “I can tell you that I see no progress,” he emphasized.

The Cuban foreign minister reiterated his willingness to engage in dialogue “on a wide variety of bilateral issues,” but emphasized that issues related to Cuba’s political system or internal affairs “are not on the table.”

Rodríguez refuted the false pretexts used by the Trump White House to justify a possible military aggression against Cuba, something “prohibited by international law,” he noted.

In recent weeks, the hostility of Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has escalated with constant threats of future actions against the island “very soon”.

Trump has referred – with the mentality of a 21st-century conqueror – to “taking control of Cuba almost immediately” and threatens to deploy US aircraft carriers near its shores to, supposedly, force a surrender.

Since assuming his second term in the White House on January 20 of last year, President Trump has doubled down on his stance against Cuba. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order reversing belated but progressive measures taken by his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

Biden, who during his four years in the Oval Office remained in line with Trump’s policy towards Cuba, decided a week before the end of his presidency to remove the country from the unilateral and arbitrary United States list of alleged sponsors of terrorism.

Thus, in a cascade, the provisions arrived one after another, all destined to strangle the Caribbean nation with an unprecedented strengthening of the longest economic, financial and commercial blockade in history with the objective of overthrowing the Cuban Revolution or, that is, regime change.

He attacked remittances (they were suspended from January 31, 2025); he increased the persecution of Cuba’s international cooperation in the area of ​​health through pressure campaigns that made some countries give in, which abandoned that humanitarian program.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has also intensified its pursuit of the island’s financial operations; it ended the humanitarian parole program; it suspended visas for cultural, sports, and scientific exchanges; and in an unprecedented move after 23 years of suspension, Trump activated Title III of the Helms-Burton Act.

On January 29, a year after his return to power, he signed an executive order declaring a national emergency regarding Cuba under the false argument that it constitutes an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.

As a result, an energy blockade was imposed on the island, and punitive tariffs and secondary sanctions were threatened against any country, company, or shipping company that attempted to sell oil to Cuba, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of third-party states.

On May 1, Trump published a decree that expands his government’s unilateral coercive actions against Cuba, which are an extension of those announced in January, although he did not mention any specific entity or person at that time, but yesterday the Secretary of State revealed the Cuban entities and people included in this registry of penalties that demonstrates its extraterritoriality.

A recent vote (51-47) in the United States Senate rejected a Democratic initiative on war powers to limit possible military operations that Trump could order against Cuba without the authorization of Congress.

ro/dfm