Cuba’s Interior Ministry announced that four people were killed in a gunfight between the country’s border guards and a U.S. speedboat.
The Cuban government said in a statement on social media that the boat had license plates from Florida, a peninsula 90 miles away and about 90 miles (145 kilometers) from the island.
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He also blamed the speedboat for firing the first shots, sparking a gunfight.
“The crew of the offending speedboat opened fire on Cuban personnel, resulting in the injury of the Cuban vessel’s captain,” the statement said.
“At the time of this report, four foreign vessel invaders were killed and six injured.”
The shooting occurred Wednesday morning off the coast of Cayo Falcones, a barrier island in the Villa Clara province in north-central Cuba.
In a subsequent statement, the Interior Ministry identified the deceased as Michel Ortega Casanova. The names of the six suspects detained on the boat were also released, all of them “Cuban nationals residing in the United States.”
According to the Interior Ministry, their mission was to “carry out terrorist infiltration” on Cuban soil.
The ministry added that the seventh arrest was made inside Cuba. The person, identified as Duniel Hernández Santos, is described as a “national sent by the United States to facilitate the acceptance of armed infiltration.”
Under investigation
Wednesday’s incident is not the first time Cuban authorities have erupted into a gunfight after allegedly blocking a U.S. boat entering the territory.
Still, the latest example could be particularly controversial given the escalating tensions between the United States and Cuba over the past two months.
There is already a political backlash against the shooting in the United States, particularly within the right-wing Republican Party.
Florida Attorney General James Usmayer announced that the state would launch an investigation into the incident amid growing calls for accountability in the US Congress.
“I have directed the State Attorney’s Office to begin an investigation in collaboration with our federal, state, and law enforcement partners,” Usmayer wrote on social media.
“The Cuban government cannot be trusted. We will do everything in our power to hold the communists accountable.”
An investigation led by Cuban officials is still ongoing. However, the island’s Interior Ministry characterized the Border Patrol’s actions as part of a larger defense of Cuba’s national sovereignty.
“In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban state that protects sovereignty and ensures regional stability,” the ministry wrote.
Meanwhile, US Vice President J.D. Vance said the situation was one that the United States was “monitoring.” He acknowledged that he had discussed the incident with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“I hope it’s not as bad as we fear, but I can’t say much more because I don’t know,” Vance said.
Rubio himself addressed the shooting incident on the sidelines of a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) meeting in St. Kitts. He denied that the speedboat was part of a U.S. government operation.
“Suffice it to say, it’s extremely unusual for a gunfight like this to occur on the open sea,” Rubio said. “It’s not something that happens every day. Frankly, it hasn’t happened in Cuba in a long time.”
Tense relationship with the US
The shootout occurred at a sensitive time for Cuba’s international relations. Cuba is becoming increasingly isolated, and the United States is threatening military action in Latin America.
For example, one of Cuba’s closest regional allies has experienced havoc at the hands of the US military. On January 3, US President Donald Trump authorized an early morning military operation to abduct then-President Nicolas Maduro and transport him to the US for trial.
Immediately after the attack, President Trump, Rubio and other officials issued statements suggesting they welcomed the fall of Cuba’s communist regime.
“If I lived in Havana and was part of the government, I would be worried,” Rubio, a longtime anti-Cuban hawk, told reporters.
Trump, on the other hand, was more outspoken. Immediately after the attack on Venezuela, he said, “Cuba seems ready to collapse.”
In the weeks since, the United States has announced it would cut off Venezuelan money and oil supplies to Cuba, imposed an oil blockade on the island on January 29, and threatened Cuba’s trading partners with sanctions.
In his executive order, President Trump denounced Cuba as an “extraordinary and extraordinary threat” to the United States, citing its relationships with hostile governments such as Iran, China and Russia.
“The Cuban government has taken extraordinary actions that harm and threaten the United States,” President Trump said in the executive order. “The regime collaborates with and provides support to numerous adversarial countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign forces hostile to the United States.”
Cuba is one of the countries under the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign as it seeks to increase its influence in the Western Hemisphere.
But relations with the United States have been strained for years. Cuba was subject to a U.S. arms embargo in 1958, which was later expanded to a total embargo covering all products and services in the 1960s.
The embargo cut Cuba off from one of its closest trading partners at the time. Officials and rights experts also argue that the historically long embargo has worsened the humanitarian situation on the island, which is suffering from an economic downturn and shortages.
history of gunfights
However, the US government cites the island’s history of human rights abuses as a reason for maintaining economic sanctions against Cuba.
In 2021, during the first term of the Trump administration, Cuba’s Interior Ministry and its leader, Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas, were both sanctioned as “perpetrators of serious human rights violations and corruption around the world.”
The Cuban government has faced accusations for decades of restricting free speech and violently suppressing dissent.
There is also a history of violent gun battles with boats that have been accused of infringing on territorial sovereignty.
Political repression and economic turmoil have forced many Cubans to flee the country over the past 60 years.
For example, at the height of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the early 2020s, income from tourism, one of Cuba’s main industries, significantly decreased.
As a result, there was a severe shortage of basic supplies, and approximately 2 million people, more than 10 percent of the population, were forced to leave the island.
However, the Cuban government has responded, sometimes violently, to irregular immigration from the island.
For example, in June 2022, Cuba reported two back-to-back gunfights involving speedboats suspected of smuggling its citizens abroad. One of the incidents occurred on June 18 of the same year, in which a police officer was injured. In the second incident on June 27, a person on a speedboat died.
In such cases, the Cuban government typically concludes that the violence was caused by the actions of the speedboat in question. He also mentioned the need to protect the country’s territory and stability.
South Florida’s large Cuban-American community in particular has an activist network that has been working for decades to help refugees flee the island.
But they, too, experienced loss. One of the most famous incidents occurred in 1996, when a small plane operated by the activist group Brothers to the Rescue was shot down by the Cuban military.
In comments to the media, Secretary of State Rubio acknowledged that such shootings have occurred in the past. However, he stressed that there is currently no information showing any similarities between these events and what happened on Wednesday.
“Yes, there have been people in the past who have fled to Cuba for the purpose of bringing people and other things. That is illegal. It is a violation of federal law,” Rubio said.
“We’ve caught people doing that in the past. To be honest, it usually doesn’t lead to a gunfight.”
Backlash in the US
Florida politicians were among the first to condemn Wednesday’s shooting. Republican Rep. Carlos Jimenez, who represents the Florida Keys and south Miami, said the incident “raises serious concerns about the use of deadly force.”
“U.S. authorities must determine whether any of the victims were U.S. citizens or legal residents and establish exactly what happened,” he said in a statement.
Jimenez, who was born in Havana and fled the Cuban revolution, called for an end to Cuba’s communist government.
“The Cuban regime must be relegated to the dustbin of history for its countless crimes against humanity,” he said.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott reposted Jimenez’s appeal for an investigation and added his own message of condemnation: “Cuba’s communist regime must be held accountable!”
Rubio explained at Wednesday’s CARICOM meeting that the U.S. Coast Guard is being deployed to the area.
In his comments, Rubio explained that the U.S. government only has information provided by Cuba. But U.S. diplomats and military officials are seeking more details to “independently verify” what happened, he added.
“We have an embassy in Havana and as we speak, we are asking for access to the people who were on these ships, whether they were American citizens or permanent residents,” Rubio said.
“I’m not going to speculate. I’m not going to give an opinion on something I don’t know. But I’m going to look into exactly what happened here and respond accordingly.”
