The Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel stated this Saturday that 32 Cuban fighters "held back" the United States Delta Force during the operation that captured Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, in Caracas.
Before delegations of the 'Nuestra América Convoy' gathered at the Palace of Conventions in Havana, the leader designated by Raúl Castro provided an exaggerated version of events that cost the lives of 32 Cubans and highlighted the Cuban military presence in Venezuela, which has been denied by Havana on numerous occasions.
"Thirty-two of them defended the integrity of the president of Venezuela. Thirty-two of them held back a Delta Force from the United States that planned to carry out the operation in just a few minutes and complicated the mission," declared Díaz-Canel before the nearly 650 visitors from 33 countries and 140 organizations that make up the Convoy, an initiative organized by Progressive International.
To give an epic quality to the event, the first secretary of the Communist Party also added: "And they were numerically fewer. Against them was unleashed a powerful fire supported by brutal technology, and they halted those American forces."
The ruler used the episode as a demonstration of revolutionary bravery, asking rhetorically, "What wouldn't millions of Cubans do?"
With this narrative, he reframed what was essentially an operational defeat as a heroic feat: 32 Cuban soldiers died during Operation Absolute Resolution, carried out by the Delta Force (1st SFOD-D) with the support of approximately 200 soldiers, 150 aircraft, and electronic warfare.
The operation lasted less than two hours and resulted in the capture of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, with no initial reports of American casualties, although seven soldiers were injured according to later confirmation.
The Cuban MININT officially acknowledged the 32 deaths on January 5 and 6, publishing the identities and photographs of the fallen —among them are colonels Humberto Alfonso Roca Sánchez and Lázaro Evangelio Rodríguez Rodríguez, and major Ismael Terrero Ge—, aged between 26 and 67 years. This public acknowledgment contradicted decades of official denials regarding the Cuban military presence in Venezuela.
The Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed it from Washington: "Those who were protecting Maduro were from Cuba."
Díaz-Canel declared two days of national mourning. The remains of the 32 soldiers arrived in Cuba on January 15 for state funerals with official mobilization, and Venezuela declared them "Heroes and Martyrs of the Bolivarian Homeland".
On February 18, MININT organized an event in Havana with four survivors from the Personal Security Directorate, praising them for their "courage" in the face of a "superior" enemy.
In the same speech this Saturday, Díaz-Canel also referred to the incident of February 25, when Cuban border guards intercepted a speedboat registered in Florida near Cayo Falcones, in Villa Clara, killing four of its ten occupants and injuring six others. The regime described the event as an attempt of "armed infiltration for terrorist purposes".
Family members and opposition groups reject this version, describing the occupants as workers and activists with no history of violence. You can consult who the four deceased were in the incident. One of the injured, Roberto Álvarez Ávila, passed away on March 4, according to El País reported.
The event of the Convoy Nuestra América featured the presence of British parliamentarian Jeremy Corbyn, activist Medea Benjamin from CODEPINK, and four European Members of Parliament. Díaz-Canel concluded his speech with a phrase that encapsulates the regime's stance in the face of international pressure: "We are in difficult times, but also in times of decisions, and here is a people that prefers to live on their feet rather than die on their knees."
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