Cuba Probably Didn’t Want This Gunfight

Incursion From Florida Is Like a Lame 1960s Re-Run

Peter Swanson Feb 26

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As most readers are by now aware there was a gunfight yesterday off the North Coast of Cuba involving Floridians. Naturally, some Cuban-American congressman in Florida immediately jumped up and called it a “massacre.”

Cuban Coast Guard personnel had shot up a Florida registered boat, killing four men. The congressman and others cried out for revenge.

According to Cuba, their patrol boat had challenged the Florida boat when it was one nautical mile from the Cuban coast. Cuban authorities said that there had been 10 men aboard, six of whom had survived. All of them had been wounded and taken to hospitals.

Personally, I tend to believe the Cuban government’s assertion that the Florida boat fired first. That’s because the junior officer commanding the Cuban patrol boat—who is said to have been wounded in the initial fusilade—would not have had the authority to initiate any action with geopolitical consequences.

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He—probably a he—would have had a broad authority to deal with misbehaving Cuban citizens, but if he were able to see the FL 7726 SH registration on the boat’s bow or even suspected American origins, given her position just 30 miles south of Cay Sal, the rules of engagement likely would have been: Do not fire unless fired upon.

Cay Sal is a regular rest stop on the people smuggling route between the mangroves of Cuba’s North Coast and South Florida.

Various political figures in the U.S. called for an investigation, including the assertive Florida attorney general, James Uthmeier. Captain Obvious observed that “the Cuban government cannot be trusted.” Okay, right. However, with Cuba starved for fuel, food and medicine, and the U.S. military racing around the world in sixth gear, the Communists can probably be trusted not to make a move tantamount to state suicide.

The Cuban government identified the men as Cuban citizens living in the U.S. That is likely because Cuba considers anyone born in Cuba to be Cuban citizen regardless of the status they may hold in another country.

One of the men killed was identified by the New York Post as Michel Ortega Casanova, a truck driver and U.S. citizen living in Miami. His brother said Casanova, who had been in the U.S. for 20 years, “fell into an ‘obsessive and diabolical quest’ for Cuba’s freedom,” according to the Post.

According to Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the secret police and Coast Guard (and all fire departments, too), the men from America had military style weapons, improvised explosive devices, body armor and camouflage clothing. Cuba labeled them terrorists and said that most had criminal histories.

(One news account posited that the men were actually on a mission to rescue family members from oppression and bring them back to Florida, but that seems unlikely, given the number of men already taking up space on the small vessel.)

As described, this scenario was a replay of the 1960s, when Cuban exiles from South Florida snuck into Cuban waters aboard small craft, attacked Soviet ships on the docks and machine-gunned oceanfront resorts. The attackers were often trained and funded by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Christopher Baker is a travel guide writer, photographer and bonafide Cuba expert. Baker put yesterday’s incident in historical perspective, writing:

I recall being in Havana during the 1997 hotel bombing campaign directed by Cuban-American arch-villain and ex-CIA agent Luis Posada Carrilles that killed an Italian tourist, Fabio DiCelmo. An unremorseful Posada Carrilles proudly admitted responsibility during a 1998 interview with the New York Times, sneering that DiCelmo “was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Carrilles also masterminded the bombing of Cubana Aviacion flight 455 that killed all 73 innocent civilians aboard in 1976.

Which brings us to the vessel in question—a 1981 Pro-Line that is maybe 23 or 24 feet in length. So far, the Cubans have not released a photo of the actual vessel, so we don’t know if its the center-console or the walk-around cuddy model. Either way, and maybe this comes from too much Hollywood, but if the CIA were sponsoring a covert mission today, wouldn’t the agency find something bigger and newer than an ancient Pro-Line?

The inshore waters near where the fight happened are well suited to a paramilitary staging area. Without a major port nearby, the waters are not heavily traveled, and there are numerous mangrove cays for concealment. Also, the nearest town, Corralillo does not lie directly on the water (even though it was the port of entry for the 18th century slave trade).

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