The State Department issued a direct warning to the Cuban regime this Tuesday: those who threaten the United States will not go unpunished, and to illustrate this, it pointed to the fate of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, who was captured by U.S. forces on January 3 while being guarded by Cuban soldiers in Venezuela.
"The Cuban regime should examine Maduro's comments prior to January 3 and the subsequent events when he was 'protected' by Cuban soldiers," stated Juliana Camacho, spokesperson for the State Department, in exclusive statements to the site Café Fuerte.
Camacho added that "the Trump Administration will not sit idly by while those who act recklessly threaten or seek to harm the United States and its citizens."
The warning was a direct response to the statements made by Brigadier General Emir Mesa Corona, head of the Personal Security Directorate of MININT, who on the previous Saturday, at an event held in Havana attended by Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel, asserted that "any attempt to kidnap or assassinate even one of our key leaders" is doomed to failure.
The event commemorated the 65th anniversary of that branch of the MININT. In his speech, Mesa Corona paid tribute to the 32 Cuban combatants of the MININT and the Armed Forces who died in Venezuela during the operation that resulted in the capture of Maduro, presenting them as "heroic symbols."
The general warned that a U.S. military action against Cuba would receive a response from "the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Military Counterintelligence, the Ministry of the Interior, and every revolutionary Cuban."
The capture of Maduro weighs heavily as an unavoidable reference in the escalation between Washington and Havana, especially since the Department of Justice declassified, on May 20, a formal charge against Raúl Castro in a federal court in Miami for the murder of four pilots from the organization Hermanos al Rescate in 1996.
Following that accusation, U.S. authorities issued an arrest warrant for Castro, who is considered a fugitive from justice.
Military experts and analysts have mentioned in U.S. media the possibility of an operation to capture Raúl Castro or extract Díaz-Canel, a scenario that the Cuban leadership is attempting to deter with its public warnings.
In parallel, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla stated on Monday that the negotiation channel with Washington is interrupted, although the State Department rejected that version and labeled it as a propaganda maneuver.
"It does not surprise us that the Cuban regime spreads this propaganda. In reality, the conversations continue, but so far the regime has refused to accept any measures that would benefit the Cuban people, as ultimately, that would threaten their absolute control," noted a U.S. official.
According to that same source, Washington proposed to supply fuel and humanitarian assistance to Cuba in exchange for the regime privatizing its energy sector, an offer that Havana rejected.
The next confrontation between the two countries will take place at the UN General Assembly on October 27 and 28, when Cuba will present as an urgent topic the end of the embargo and the effects of the intensification of sanctions over the past year.
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