A vintage car passes by a billboard in Havana displaying images of Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro, and Cuba's President Miguel Díaz-Canel. The scene captures a moment of heightened tension as Cubans grapple with the news that the US has brought criminal charges against 94-year-old former president Raúl Castro.
Neighbors Under Scrutiny
A new question is being asked in Havana: who's your neighbor? If you live near a senior figure in Cuba's government or armed forces, others express concerned sympathy. For the first time, US military strikes on the island are being considered a serious possibility. There is also anger at Washington from a population that had previously lost faith in its own government.
“How dare they?” said a teacher in Havana, who was considering attending a march against the indictment. “I’d never normally go to something like that, but it’s despicable. Who are they to threaten us in such a way?”
The 1996 Shootdown
It has been 30 years since Cuban fighter jets shot down two unarmed Cessna planes belonging to the exile group Brothers to the Rescue in international airspace north of Havana, killing four people. At the time, it was seen as both an atrocity and a terrible strategic error. Now the incident is at the heart of the US indictment of Castro.
What is less remembered is that it wasn't a surprise. Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, the first rebel leader to enter Havana under Fidel Castro but by then living in exile, told a reporter in Miami: “Everybody here knew something was going to happen to the planes.”
Brothers to the Rescue was founded by Bay of Pigs veteran José Basulto to spot Cuban refugees on makeshift rafts. By the mid-90s, it had turned to provocation by buzzing Cuba and dropping leaflets. According to the book Back Channel to Cuba, Fidel Castro himself said the US would never tolerate such flights over its own capital.
“Their most provocative act in 1995 came on July 13, when Basulto’s Cessna Skymaster buzzed Havana, raining down thousands of religious medallions and leaflets reading ‘Brothers, Not Comrades’,” the authors wrote.
Despite pleas from the Cuban government, the US continued to tolerate the flights. Eventually, the Cuban leadership snapped. “Fidel was trying to find a diplomatic solution, he had sent several messages to Bill Clinton saying, ‘You have to stop this, we cannot stand it,’” said Carlos Alzugaray, who was Cuba’s ambassador to Brussels at the time.
Mounting Pressure
The pressure the Cuban government faces now is far greater than in the 1990s. Wednesday’s indictment follows weeks of surveillance aircraft circling the island, intelligence reports suggesting Cuba poses a threat with drones, the CIA director landing in Havana to warn against cozying up to Russia and China, and the aircraft carrier group Nimitz entering the Caribbean.
In a speech directed to the Cuban people, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “You, who call the island your home, are going through unimaginable hardships. Today I want to tell you what we, in the US, are offering to help you not only alleviate the current crisis, but also to build a better future.”
He blamed the Cuban government for 22-hour blackouts, despite the US oil blockade and nearly 70-year embargo. He also played to Cuban concerns about the military’s control over the economy. “They buy fuel for their generators and their vehicles while the people are asked to sacrifice,” he said.
Rubio’s speech was widely seen in Cuba as clever and well-informed. Recently, he offered Cuba $100 million in aid, which on Thursday he said had been accepted, but he did not confirm whether Washington would agree to Havana’s terms.
Economic Pressure
US sanctions have driven out non-US businesses. On Thursday, Spanish charter airline World2Fly joined many others in stopping flights to the island. Donald Trump has repeatedly made clear he wants to “free” Cuba for his Cuban American friends in Miami. Concerns about an American protectorate were fueled by a Bloomberg report that Canadian nickel miner Sherritt is in talks with former Trump adviser Ray Washburne to hand over a controlling stake.
“I think this is a pretty good introductory course to the sort of barefaced corruption that would accompany any sort of US control over Cuba,” said a European businessman working in Cuba. Such overweening US control originally led to the Cuban revolution.
The Indictment
Perhaps the most inevitable part of the story is that one of the Cuban MiG pilots alleged to have been involved in the shootdown arrived in the US in 2024 as part of a wave of immigration that has seen Cuba lose 20% of its population since 2021. Luis González-Pardo Rodríguez, already facing charges of immigration fraud, was indicted alongside Raúl Castro.
“The indictments should have happened – not in the US, but in a post-Castro Cuba. All these crimes – including many we don’t know about – will come out and it should be for the Cuban people to decide whether there are trials or a process of reconciliation and forgiveness,” said Manuel Barcia, a Cuban who is now pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Bath.
Whether the US will now try to abduct Castro, as it did Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, remains to be seen. “How far do they want to go with this?” asked former ambassador Alzugaray. “Are they really going to come in and abduct a 94-year-old guy?”
