The Secretary of State Marco Rubio evoked the "terrorist fields of Castro" this Thursday before representatives from over 60 countries gathered in Washington for the Ministerial Conference on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, pointing to the Cuban regime as a central player in the construction of violent extreme left movements in the Western Hemisphere.
In his speech at the ministerial conference, Rubio stated that “the extensive intelligence and ideological network of the Cuban regime helped build the far-left in our country and in our hemisphere, and remains inextricably linked to far-left groups and movements both within and beyond the West.”
The head of U.S. diplomacy recalled that "tens of thousands of Marxist guerrillas" were "trained to kill in Castro's terrorist camps," in a direct reference to the network of camps that Fidel Castro's regime operated since the late 1960s to indoctrinate and arm fighters from different continents.
Rubio outlined a historical arc that connects these fields to groups such as the Tupamaros, the Montoneros, the FARC, the ELN, and Sendero Luminoso in Latin America, as well as to the Italian Red Brigades, the German Red Army Fraction, and the 17N organization in Greece, culminating in the extreme left violence that is currently shaking Europe and the United States.
To support his argument, the secretary cited compelling figures: between 1970 and 1980, 93% of terrorist attacks in the West came from the far left, and in just 18 months, between 1971 and 1972, the FBI recorded 2,500 bombings on U.S. soil, at a rate of almost five per day.
Rubio denounced that Western counterterrorism has had a "blind spot" regarding this threat for decades, while focusing all its attention on jihadist extremism.
He acknowledged the achievements in that area —jihadist attacks in the United States have dropped by two-thirds since the peak of ISIS, and deaths from that type of terrorism in Europe have decreased by 97% between 2015 and 2024— but warned that the threat from the left has resurfaced with strength.
As proof of the present, he mentioned a 72-year-old woman burned alive in Greece two weeks before the conference, a five-day blackout in Berlin during the winter that left an 83-year-old woman dead, and the death of a 23-year-old French man who was beaten to death in Lyon.
It was also pointed out that extreme left violence in Germany increased by more than 40% in the last year, and that in Greece, over 80% of radical violence comes from extreme left actors and anarchists.
The secretary also pointed to the transnational connections of these groups, including Iranian proxy networks that, he noted, are "increasingly closely linked to leftist militant groups around the world."
Rubio concluded his remarks with a call for collective action: "Either we cooperate across our borders or terrorists will continue to exploit the gaps between them," and announced that there will be new designations of groups as foreign terrorist organizations, while the upcoming counterterrorism workshop will be co-organized with Germany.
The conference is held within the context of a sustained escalation of pressure from Washington against Havana: on July 13, three days before the event, the United States imposed an eighth round of sanctions against 10 additional Cuban entities, including the Rapid Response Brigades and the Ministry of Tourism.
Since January 2026, the Trump administration has imposed more than 240 sanctions against Cuba.
The Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez reacted on Wednesday, labeling the conference as "McCarthyist" and based on "lies," and recommended that Rubio "read history." Deputy Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío described it as a "smoke screen."
China also came to the regime's defense by criticizing the sanctions imposed days earlier.
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