Brigadier General Arthur J. Garffer Jr., Secretary of Public Safety of Puerto Rico and officer of the Puerto Rico National Guard, issued a series of strong warnings to the regime of Miguel Díaz-Canel in an exclusive interview with Telemundo 51 recorded at Roosevelt Roads Air Base in Ceiba, Puerto Rico.
Garffer left no room for ambiguity at any moment.
"Given what we are seeing publicly, I understand that the end of the Castro, Díaz-Canel, and their henchmen's communist dictatorial regime is approaching," he stated.
"Options are running out with Cuba. The military is waiting for the order," he said at another moment.
E insisted: «Cuba has been warned. Cuba is very close to being liberated».
The offer: Russia, China, or North Korea
Garffer described the "voluntary departures" that the Trump administration allegedly proposed.
"They are being given various opportunities to go to Russia, go to China, go to North Korea, those countries that they love so much, so they should just go there," he asserted.
However, he warned that this window has a limit: "If they do not take this opportunity, there is what is called a decision point, which the administration already has."
On the correlation of forces, he was categorical: “In this diplomatic negotiation, the United States holds all the cards.”
The brigadier general anticipated July 26 -National Rebellion Day, which commemorates the assault on the Moncada Barracks in 1953- as a possible milestone for a regime change.
“I believe it would be tremendous if before or on the same day there were some type of overthrow of this communist dictatorial regime,” he predicted.
"False Machismo": The Regime's Dismissed Rhetoric
Regarding Díaz-Canel's threats of a possible "bloodbath," Garffer dismissed them by drawing a historical comparison: "We are seeing much of the same rhetoric from Díaz-Canel that Maduro used, that Ayatollah Khamenei used in Iran, that Raúl Cedrás used in Haiti in the 90s and 2000s, which is a false machismo."
The reference to Cedrás is telling: the Haitian general who led the coup against Aristide in 1991 ended up in exile in 1994 after pressure from the U.S. military, without the main troop deployment occurring.
Operations underway since 2025
Garffer revealed that the military preparation is not recent: "This is something that has been happening since July, August of last year, doing what is called a shaping operation. In other words, we are placing the pieces on the board to be able to execute operations."
The interview was recorded at Roosevelt Roads, a base with a runway of 11,000 feet, closed in 2004 and reactivated by the Trump administration.
From there, the planes and helicopters that participated in the capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026, operated.
Hegseth's visit to Guantánamo, part of the message
Garffer contextualized the visit of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to Guantánamo -held on Wednesday, his second since taking office- as part of a coordinated strategy:
"That's part of what the Secretary of War's visit represents, sending a strong and clear message on U.S. soil, but in Cuba, that the blockade and avenues for negotiation will come to an end one way or another."
From Guantánamo, Hegseth proclaimed the "Donroe Doctrine" and warned the regime that acquiring weapons capable of reaching the base or the continental U.S. would be "inviting a confrontation that they not only do not desire, but also could not withstand."
Filed under: