The Trump administration on Might 20, 2026, indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro for murder, primarily based on the downing of two planes close to the Cuban shoreline in 1996 that killed 4 individuals.
As a historian of Latin America and U.S. foreign policy, I imagine the indictment could be the prelude to direct U.S. army motion towards Cuba.
Earlier than Castro, the final U.S. indictment of a Latin American chief occurred in January 2026, when a U.S. attorney appointed by President Donald Trump charged Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro with narco-terrorism. These expenses have been promptly adopted by U.S. military strikes on Venezuela and the abduction of Maduro.
Since January, the U.S. has ended the flow of Venezuelan oil to Cuba and has used economic and military stress to forestall different nations from buying and selling with the island. And Trump recently threatened a “friendly takeover” of Cuba.
I imagine that what’s lacking from most up-to-date evaluation of this case is the history of U.S. aggression against Cuba. That is important context for understanding the Trump administration’s current escalations.
‘Placing at Cuba always’
In 1823, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams identified Cuba as “an object of transcendent significance to the political and industrial pursuits of our Union.” The 1959 Cuban Revolution that overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and changed him with Fidel Castro, brother of Raúl, immediately challenged those interests by asserting political autonomy and expropriating personal property.
State Department officials observed that “nearly all of Cubans assist Castro” due to the government’s redistributive measures and its “actual honesty, courtesy, and idealism.” One official warned “that if the Cuban revolution is profitable different international locations in Latin America and maybe elsewhere will use it as a mannequin and we should always resolve whether or not or not we want to have the Cuban revolution succeed.”
They determined shortly. By December 1959, President Dwight Eisenhower’s CIA director had approved plans to overthrow the Castro government. U.S. coverage thereafter included direct sponsorship and safe haven for Cuban paramilitary teams.
An American aircraft is shot down on Playa Girón through the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
The CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 is simply probably the most well-known episode. The U.S. skilled 1,400 Cuban exiles to invade Cuba, hoping to ignite a nationwide insurrection. As an alternative, Cubans rallied behind the federal government.
Although U.S. analysts often criticize the invasion as a result of it failed, it was additionally a major crime under international law. Several hundred Cubans were killed.
Concern of a repeat invasion additionally led Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to ship nuclear missiles to Cuba, precipitating the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 that nearly led to nuclear conflict.
Longtime CIA official Richard Helms later testified that within the early Nineteen Sixties, “We had job forces that have been putting at Cuba always. We have been trying to explode energy vegetation, we have been trying to smash sugar mills, we have been trying to do all types of issues throughout this era. This was a matter of American Authorities coverage.”
In 1976, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, two Cuban exiles, planned the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner close to Barbados that killed all 73 individuals aboard.
“The C.I.A. taught us every part,” Posada Carriles said later. “They taught us explosives, find out how to kill, bomb, skilled us in acts of sabotage.”
Both men were given refuge in the US for the remainder of their lives.
The Bay of Pigs invasion and the airline bombing violate the core rules of worldwide regulation, together with prohibitions on the unprovoked “threat or use of force” and collective punishment. The U.S. authorities itself defines “international terrorism” as “violent acts” meant “to affect the coverage of a authorities by intimidation or coercion” or to “intimidate or coerce a civilian inhabitants.”
By that definition, its Cuba coverage qualifies.
By ‘each attainable means’
One other U.S. technique of putting at Cuba was by way of financial sanctions, first imposed on the nation in 1960. That yr, a State Department official wrote that “each attainable means ought to be undertaken promptly to weaken the financial lifetime of Cuba” in order “to result in starvation, desperation and overthrow of presidency.” The logic of collective punishment was clear: make Cubans undergo sufficient that they insurgent towards Castro.
Photos of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Raúl Castro and Fidel Castro adorn the state constructing in Havana, Cuba, on Might 20, 2026. AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
This coverage is now extra aggressive than ever. The tightening of U.S. sanctions since Trump’s first time period has reduced Cuba’s income from tourism, remittances and abroad medical missions. Now, by choking off the availability of gas, the U.S. has critically weakened the healthcare and sanitation methods that depend upon electrical energy.
Medical professionals and United Nations observers have described scenes of ventilators and incubators left with out energy, pharmacies empty and healthcare staff pressured into “horrible decisions” about who lives and dies. A current medical research reported a 148% increase in infant mortality between 2018 and 2025, that means that about 1,800 infants died who in any other case would have lived.
‘I used to be skilled as a terrorist by the US’
The main focus of the current U.S. indictment against Raúl Castro was the incident on Feb. 24, 1996, when the Cuban army, which was headed by Castro, shot down these two planes.
The planes have been operated by Brothers to the Rescue, an anti-Castro group of Cuban exiles who stated they have been aiding Cuban emigres making an attempt to achieve Florida. The group’s head, and one of many surviving pilots that day, was José Basulto, a veteran CIA asset and participant within the Bay of Pigs invasion.
In 1962, Basulto fired a cannon and machine gun “16 times” at a Cuban lodge, he later recounted. “I used to be skilled as a terrorist by the US,” Basulto once told an interviewer.
Basulto’s aircraft had entered Cuban airspace on Feb. 24, as a U.S. customs service specialist later testified. Correspondence from the day exhibits that Basulto did so knowingly. The earlier July, he had told a TV viewers, “We wish confrontation.”
Whereas the Cuban military could have deescalated the state of affairs extra fastidiously that day, Cuba had been trying for months to cease the violations of its airspace.
I imagine indicting Cuban officers over the incident is disingenuous, given the provocations by Brothers to the Rescue and U.S. actions towards Cuba, that are in direct violation of international and U.S. legal guidelines that prohibit threats, nondefensive violence and collective punishment.
US Indictment of Raúl Castro Comes Amid a Long History of American Aggression Against Cuba was initially revealed by The Dialog and is republished with permission.
