The former Colombian president Gustavo Petro put Johana Tablada de la Torre, the second in command of the Cuban Embassy in Mexico, in an awkward situation by recounting to her how the Cuban soldiers defending Nicolás Maduro were left alone during the U.S. operation that ended with his capture on January 3.
In the intervention video, shared on Instagram by Latinos 24, the diplomat is seen at the podium with expressions of surprise, shaking her head, and gestures that indicate concern and frustration.
The scene has a particularly compromising precedent for her: in 2019 she affirmed that "there are no Cuban troops in Venezuela" and denied that Cuba was involved with military personnel in security operations in that country.
Petro spoke at the XXX International Seminar "The Parties and a New Society," organized by the Labor Party in Mexico City from October 8 to 10. He stated that Cubans resisted "until the last bullet" and that a survivor retrieved the bodies without the help of Venezuelan soldiers.
"It wasn't that the Venezuelan soldiers took the corpses and saved them from falling into the hands of the United States, no. It was that a Cuban survivor took each corpse, moved it to a storage area not controlled by the United States, and that's why they could be buried by their family."
A defender of the official narrative
Tablada de la Torre holds a significant position in the Cuban representation in Mexico: she has the rank of ambassador and serves as head of the Chancellery Office and Deputy Head of Mission, according to the official directory of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Previously, she served as the Deputy Director General for the United States at MINREX, from where she became one of the most vocal advocates for Havana's positions in the public defense against Washington.
Her diplomatic and communicative activity combines institutional representation with an intensive political communication effort: interviews, public appearances, and social media messages that attribute the Cuban crisis to the embargo and discredit the regime's critics.
This confrontational profile has continued from Mexico. In July, he described Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a man who is “sick with ambition, complex, and hatred,” in another post aimed at discrediting U.S. accusations against the Cuban regime.
For this reason, her reaction to Petro carries a weight that goes beyond mere gestures: a public official accustomed to defending the official narrative was listening to a leftist leader describe the role of the Cuban military that she had publicly denied.
The death of 32 members of the FAR and MININT during the capture of Maduro, acknowledged by Havana, confirmed that presence. The regime declared two days of national mourning, and the remains were repatriated on January 15.
The story of abandonment and the Chavista dispute
The version presented by Petro coincides with the testimony of a supposed surviving Cuban official disseminated by the influencer and defender of the Cuban regime, Tere Felipe, and collected on the social network X by journalist Maibort Petit.
According to that account, the man had to retrieve the bodies one by one because no Venezuelan helped him. The claim of abandonment comes from that testimony; the official acknowledgment of Cuban casualties does not independently confirm all of its details.
The intervention also provoked an open clash with representatives of chavismo. According to a report by El País, during his criticisms of Venezuelan oil policy, deputy Jesús Faría interrupted him and accused him of lying. Later, deputy Tania Díaz challenged him, calling him "Santander" and reproaching him for remaining silent despite knowing what was happening.
Before Johana Tablada de la Torre, the episode left the Cuban regime's diplomat and her narrative in a difficult-to-avoid contradiction: the military whose presence she had denied ended up becoming the protagonists of Petro's account regarding the defense and fall of Maduro.
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