By YUSEF RAMIREZ

The United States intensified its aggression against the Cuban people by accusing Raúl Castro of murder. This accusation stems from the shooting down of two U.S. light aircraft in Cuban airspace by the Cuban armed forces in 1996. These planes were operating on behalf of the organization Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR), which flew over Cuban airspace to provoke the government and drop anti-communist propaganda to foment an uprising against the regime.

Brothers to the Rescue emerged from the anti-communist Cuban community in the years following the 1959 Revolution. The Cuban government informed the U.S. military of BTTR’s incursions into Cuban territory, but Washington refused to halt their activities. José Bastos responded to U.S. Federal Aviation Authority’s warnings by stating that he was carrying out “acts of civil disobedience” against the Cuban government.

Although U.S. administrations from Clinton to Trump have condemned the downing of the planes as an unprovoked attack on a civilian aircraft, the reality runs deeper. José Basulto was a CIA operative who, like many others, sought to destabilize and overthrow the Cuban Revolution through propaganda, sabotage, and terrorism. Even though in 2023 the U.S. reclassified Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, the reality is the opposite: the U.S. has invaded, sent bacteria, assassinated, bombed, and attempted to eliminate the leaders of the Revolution. José Basulto himself is a veteran of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1963, who also participated in the bombing of a Havana hotel in 1962, firing cannons from a motorboat.

This aggression is part of an effort to force regime change in Cuba or to coerce the regime into accepting U.S. hegemony. The U.S. seeks to recolonize Latin America to curb the growth of Chinese imperialism, which continues its economic and diplomatic intervention across the continent. This effort comes because other imperialist powers—primarily Russian and Chinese—have emerged, challenging U.S. hegemony in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, East Asia, and Latin America, a new global reality that is forcing the U.S. to refocus on its historic “backyard.”

Trump is following the same pattern used in preparation for the fall of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Legal charges, economic pressure, and military threats were used to isolate the regime and arrest Maduro with a special forces raid. With the abduction of Nicolás Maduro and the subjugation of the Venezuelan state under Delcy Rodríguez, Trump sent a message to all of Latin America—that the yanks had arrived to put things in order.

With the energy blockade against Cuba, the U.S. is plunging Cubans into a deep crisis, in which water, food, transportation, medical care, and all the essential services that make a society function are in short supply. Since the indictment of Raúl Castro, the U.S. has imposed new sanctions against its tourism industry, all with the aim of strangling the island’s economy and increasing the desperation of the Cuban people.

The military, economic, and political pressure on Cuba indicates that the U.S. aims to bring down or force the Cuban regime to capitulate. On May 14, CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unprecedented visit to the island, where he bluntly told the Cuban government that the U.S. was willing to ease sanctions and provide economic support if the government made “fundamental changes”—changes that point toward a regime that obeys the orders of U.S. imperialism.

It is no coincidence that the United States is intensifying its attacks on Cuba at this moment. Just before the midterm elections in the U.S.—in which Trump maintains his power as leader of the Republican Party but with waning popular support—Trump aims to bolster his legitimacy with a foreign policy victory against one of U.S. imperialism’s longstanding political enemies. The humiliation the U.S. faces from Iran is driving it to attack Cuba, a weaker country, in order to bolster its image as an imperialist power by bullying a weaker enemy.

The accusation against Raúl Castro is also a concession to the rabid right-wing Cuban community, which has for decades dreamed of returning and reclaiming the properties expropriated by the 1959 revolution. Cuban anti-communism in Florida is closely linked to the MAGA movement, who see in this movement an opportunity to put an end to the Cuban Communist Party and the legacy of the Cuban Revolution.

Furthermore, the attack is not limited to Cuba; the federal government intends to launch investigations against the movement in solidarity with Cuba within the United States. It is part of their authoritarian agenda to silence all dissent, particularly that which upholds the legacy of the Cuban Revolution, international solidarity, and the right of colonized peoples to self-determination.

We socialists in the U.S. have a responsibility to fight against the Trump administration’s attacks on Cuba. We oppose economic sanctions, legal maneuvers against its leaders, and the military blockade, without offering political support to the Cuban regime. Only the Cuban working class, in alliance with workers in the U.S. and Latin America, can offer a dignified, sovereign, and democratic solution for the Cuban people.

Photo: Raúl Castro (AP)

The post On the U.S. indictment of Raúl Castro first appeared on Workers’ Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores.

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