Saying that "something is afoot" around Cuba almost feels redundant. Something has always been afoot there, for decades. Only now, the American imperial machine has decided to pull an old case out of the archive and present it as a sudden awakening of justice. Raul Castro, the 94-year-old symbol of the Cuban Revolution, has been indicted over events from 1996, the downing of two small aircraft, and Washington now wants the world to believe that, after three decades, American justice has experienced some kind of moral revelation. Of course, something else is happening. A legal pretext is being built for another act of aggression.
Let us begin with the accusation itself. On February 24, 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two small civilian Cessna 337 aircraft belonging to "Brothers to the Rescue", an organization of Cuban exiles from Miami led by José Basulto, a former operative linked to the CIA. Four Cuban-American crew members were killed, while a third aircraft returned to the United States. The group had originally been created as a humanitarian network to locate Cuban refugees at sea, but over time it moved more openly into political and propaganda operations against Havana, including flights toward Cuba and the dropping of leaflets over the capital.
Cuba argued that these were systematic and deliberate violations of its airspace, and that Washington had been warned repeatedly. The United States, meanwhile, claimed that the downed aircraft were in international airspace. A later ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) investigation concluded that they had been shot down outside Cuban territorial airspace, while also noting the broader context of previous incursions and warnings. From the beginning, then, the case had a double meaning: for Miami and Washington, it was "proof of Cuban brutality against unarmed civilians"; for Havana, it was the defense of national borders against an exile network that was not merely humanitarian, but part of a political-subversive structure in the long war against the Cuban Revolution.
So. We have a case from 1996. We have Cuba’s claim that the organization was systematically provoking its airspace. We have America’s claim that unarmed civilians were killed. And we have the present moment, in which Washington has suddenly remembered that now, in May 2026, Raul Castro must be criminally prosecuted. Precisely at a time when pressure on Cuba is being pushed to the maximum, and when the island is, in some sense, being prepared for an American intervention that is supposed to give Trump a "victory" after he realized there is no such victory waiting for him in the Persian Gulf.
Raul Castro, of course, is not only a former president. For America, he is also not merely a former defense minister, nor simply Fidel Castro’s brother. He is a living reminder that a revolutionary island still exists just off Florida, and that it has resisted American pressure for more than six decades. That is the real problem. Not the pathetic speeches about justice. The problem is that socialist Cuba still exists.
The alleged American "concern" for the Cuban people adds a special layer of cynicism. Marco Rubio speaks of aid, food and medicine, of a "new relationship", while the very policy he represents participates in the energy strangulation of Cuba. The same people keeping their hand on the valve pose as humanitarians because they offer aid through channels they control, at a political price they set.
On May 20, Rubio offered a 100-million-dollar "aid package", while accusing the Cuban leadership of causing shortages of food, fuel and electricity. The Cuban embassy rejected the offer as part of Washington’s aggressive policy.
Pro-American media around the world, meanwhile, are doing the work of the aggressor’s policy. They write about Cuba’s electricity shortages as if power plants fail in a vacuum. As if there are no sanctions and no blockade. As if there is no American policy that has spent decades trying to make daily life in Cuba as difficult as possible, precisely so that this hardship can later be turned into political upheaval. First, a noose is tightened around a people’s neck, and then their choking is presented as proof that they do not know how to breathe.
Caracas as Model, Iran as Warning
With Trump, everything is always more brutal because he barely bothers to hide his hunger for spectacle. His politics needs a scene. An arrested enemy. A humiliated leader. A uniform crossing over to the other side. Venezuela gave him such a model earlier this year. Operation "Caracas", the abduction of Maduro, the collapse of resistance and the subsequent reshuffling of power fulfilled a dangerous American fantasy: apply enough pressure, find enough traitors inside the system, and a state can be kicked in like a rotten door.
But not every country is Venezuela. And not every pressure campaign is a prelude to surrender. Trump recently had to learn that in Iran. There, he did not get his quick performance. He did not get regime collapse. He got resistance. And now, after the Iranian failure, Cuba looks like his backup plan, a smaller target on the map, an island that might perhaps be broken before American power is once again exposed as hollow.
But the resistance Iran showed exists in Cuba as well, perhaps even more deeply. The Bay of Pigs, sabotage, exile networks, terrorist operations, the "Special Period", the collapse of Soviet support, endless shortages, humiliation, blackmail. All of that has passed through Cuban society. It has not made Cuba comfortable. It has not made it rich. But it has made it politically experienced.
The Revolution will soon face its greatest challenge and must find the answer within itself: does it have the strength to fight, or will it surrender? If the choice is struggle, then it is a life-or-death struggle. That is the only way empires are defeated.That is why Washington may once again walk into a trap. Perhaps it will find the dissatisfied. In fact, of course it will. Perhaps it will find the exhausted. The whole country is exhausted. But within it lives a people that does not want America to direct its future. Hunger does not create affection for the power that deepened the hunger.
If Trump tries to repeat Venezuela in Cuba, he may end up with an Iran in the Caribbean.
Clearly, Cuba does not have Iran’s size or military capacity, but it still has a will to resist. The empire can threaten, it can send aircraft carriers, but it cannot casually repeat what it managed in Caracas. It will probably try, but there is no guarantee it will succeed, and every new failure brings American power closer to what it fears most: that the weaker will no longer fall to their knees.
Cuba is small. Precisely because of that, it is defiantly large. If it were a great power, its resistance would be explained through resources, army, territory, demography. As it is, what remains is the thing Washington finds hardest to tolerate: political will. The island that has been told for decades that it must fall is still standing. Exhausted, with darkened streets and lines outside shops, but standing. However worn down Cuba may be, it has still not agreed to become prey, nor to offer Trump its revolutionary heroes as trophies.
As we can see everywhere, we live in a world where principles fade quickly and are replaced by pure interest. It seems that no one is ready to defend Cuba and its proud revolution on principle. But we remember how the Revolution began: in almost impossible conditions, with the landing of small boats carrying the Castro brothers, Ernesto Che Guevara and other revolutionaries. Statistically, defeat was always the far more likely outcome. But they fought a stronger enemy because they believed in the righteousness of their path. Nothing has changed since then, and Cuba, if it can no longer count on outside help, must find its strength from within.
The Revolution will soon face its greatest challenge and must find the answer within itself: does it have the strength to fight, or will it surrender? If the choice is struggle, then it is a life-or-death struggle. That is the only way empires are defeated. And that has been Cuba’s official national slogan since 1960: "Patria o Muerte, Venceremos" ("Homeland or Death, We Shall Overcome").
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