Cuba counts cost of alliance after 32 troops killed in Venezuela

From sunrise, a crowd of military personnel, government officials and civilians lined the route between the Havana airport and the Ministry of the Armed Forces to applaud the remains of 32 Cuban soldiers killed in Venezuela as they passed in the funeral cortege.

The country’s leaders, from Raul Castro to President Miguel Diaz Canel, were at the airport to receive boxes carrying the cremated ashes of “32 martyred heroes.”

Each box in the lobby of the ministry building was draped with a Cuban flag, accompanied by a photograph of the relevant soldier or intelligence officer, with the words “honor and glory” underneath.

But despite the pageantry and military parade, this was a chastening experience for the Cuban Revolution.

First, this is believed to be the largest loss of Cuban fighters at the hands of the US military since the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. The fact that there has been only one comparable armed conflict between Cuban and U.S. troops in the sixty-five years since, during or after the Cold War, shows how rare it is.

It’s little surprise that the better-trained and better-equipped Delta Force soldiers emerged virtually unscathed, especially given their elite reputation within the world’s most powerful military.

But this was no comfort to the grieving family members in Havana, who tearfully placed their hands in wooden boxes.

Moreover, in the days after the US military intervention in Venezuela and the forced removal of Nicolas Maduro from power, the Cuban Government was forced to admit something it had long denied: the presence of Cuban intelligence operatives in the corridors of power in Caracas.

It is now clear that Cubans are involved at all levels of the country’s security apparatus and that bilateral intelligence arrangements are an important part of Cuba-Venezuela ties, as has been claimed by many in Venezuela for years.

In short, the Cuban Government shared with its Venezuelan partners its many years of experience on how best to maintain its tight grip on power. The 32 people killed on Venezuelan territory were part of this joint strategy.

But after their deaths, Cubans can feel the sand shifting under their feet. A day earlier, Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, had a phone call with President Trump, after which he called him “an amazing person.”

If we were to rewind the clock just three weeks, it would be almost unthinkable to hear so much praise from the same administration that portrayed its predecessor as running an entire “narco terrorist” regime.

It looks like the Rodriguez and Trump administrations are finding a way of life. But few in the Cuban government seem yet to understand where this will leave them or their vision of shared state-run socialism with Venezuela.

Washington insists that the days for the Cuban Revolution are numbered.

But someone from the “original generation” disagrees. Victor Dreke, 88, is a contemporary of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and says the current conflict with the United States carries echoes of the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961.

He led two companies of Cuban soldiers that day and argued that the Cubans would still rebuff any repeat attempt:

“If the United States tries to invade, they will stir up a hornet’s nest,” he said, quoting Raul Castro. “They don’t even see our warriors, men and women, coming.”

“If the Americans take even one step on Cuban soil, it will not be like their cowardly ambush on our fighters in Venezuela,” he says. “Things would be very different here.”

Over the past few days, Cuban state television has broadcast footage of civilian reservists receiving weapons training from the Cuban army.

In reality, facing the US military it would be an unequal fight. The US attack on Venezuela was partly intended to underscore this point about the region.

The risks are particularly high for Cuba.

The island is experiencing widespread power outages, which are bad in Havana but much worse in the provinces. The economy, battered by the US economic embargo and government mismanagement, is limping along at best. Fuel is scarce and tourism, the engine of the economy, has never recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

It is within this already complex picture that the Cubans are trying to imagine the near-total loss of Venezuelan support. It sounds like a bleak scenario to many.

But former commander Victor Dreke is adamant that Cuba has survived difficult times before and can do so again with enough revolutionary enthusiasm.

He insists that Cuba does not want any conflict with the Trump administration and will not seek to escalate matters with Washington.

“But that doesn’t mean we won’t be ready,” he adds defiantly.