05 Jan Opinion – The Venezuelan Regime as an Instrument of Cuba Against the United States
By,
Luis Zúñiga, contributor. Political analyst and former diplomat
On the front page of Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba’s communist regime, on January 4 of this year, the following headline appeared: “Information from the Revolutionary Government (of Cuba) on combatants fallen in the fulfillment of their duty in Venezuela”.
The text continues: “As a result of the criminal attack perpetrated by the government of the United States against the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, carried out in the early hours of January 3, 2026, 32 Cubans lost their lives in combat actions. They were carrying out missions on behalf of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior… Faithful to their responsibilities for security and defense, our compatriots fulfilled their duty with dignity and heroism and fell, after fierce resistance, in direct combat against the attackers”.
This official statement confirms the high degree of involvement and influence of Cuba’s communist regime in the internal affairs of another country, Venezuela. Moreover, it demonstrates the brazenness with which the Castroist regime lies to the international community about its activities abroad.
In May 2019, Johana Tablada, Deputy Director General for the United States at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, emphatically declared that there were no Cuban troops in Venezuela, describing calls by then President Donald Trump to withdraw them as “nonexistent” and denouncing U.S. policy as one of “lies and slander” regarding cooperation between Cuba and Venezuela.
Johana Tablada’s exact words on Cuban television were: “There are no Cuban security troops in Venezuela. Cuba does not participate with troops or military personnel in security operations in Venezuela. These slanders constitute an offense against the people of Cuba, an offense against the government of Cuba, and an offense against the people of Venezuela”.
The truth has now been demonstrated. The security ring surrounding Nicolás Maduro was controlled by the Cuban communist regime, just as it controls key institutions in Venezuela. What the Cuban communist regime has done in Venezuela amounts to an occupation and colonization of that country.
In March 2019, The New York Times published an article titled “Cuba Has Kidnapped Venezuela”. That article objectively describes the enormous level of control the Cuban regime exercises over the fundamental institutions of the South American country as follows: “Venezuela is a kidnapped country because important government decisions are made in Havana, not Caracas. The tentacles of the Castro regime extend into various Venezuelan government institutions, from the immigration office to health services. The armed forces are infiltrated by Cuban citizens who occupy strategic positions within the military structure. The invasion is such that in October 2018, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, presented a report to the United Nations describing the existence of nearly 22,000 Cubans infiltrated into the Venezuelan state, especially within intelligence agencies. This same week, chilling details emerged about Cuba’s involvement in training Venezuelan torturers”.
https://www.nytimes.com/es/2019/03/22/espanol/opinion/cuba-venezuela.html
Venezuela’s strategy of exploiting the open borders of the United States to send criminal gangs such as the Tren de Aragua, criminals released from prisons, and intelligence agents to generate protests and social destabilization is a repetition of the strategy carried out by the Cuban regime against the United States during the massive Mariel exodus in 1980.
Similarly, drug trafficking operations through Venezuela carried out by the Cartel of the Suns, headed by Nicolás Maduro, repeat what the Cuban regime did in the 1980s, when it used its territory and logistics to allow Colombian drug cartels to flood the United States with narcotics.
In the federal court in Miami there is a sealed case from 1982 accusing four high-ranking Cuban officials: René Rodríguez Cruz, a member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party (CC/PCC) and the Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence; Admiral Aldo Santamaría Cuadrado of the Cuban Navy; Fernando Ravelo Renedo, Cuba’s ambassador to Colombia; and his political officer Gonzalo Bassols Suárez, of drug trafficking operations toward the United States through Cuba.
Numerous other testimonies from Colombian drug traffickers, such as Jaime Guillot Lara and Jairo Velázquez (Popeye), who personally negotiated drug shipments through Cuba with Raúl Castro, demonstrate that the drug trafficking operations of Venezuela’s Cartel of the Suns toward the United States followed the same pattern carried out by the Cuban regime in the 1980s.
All this evidence demonstrates that Cuba’s communist regime has used Venezuela as a platform of aggression against the United States and constitutes an extremely dangerous enemy to U.S. national security.
President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been correct in exposing the illegal and criminal activities carried out by the regimes of Cuba and its accomplice, Venezuela, against the United States.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).