Cuban border agents fire upon Florida-tagged speedboat, killing four

Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior (MININT) has announced that its border patrol forces engaged in a shootout with a speedboat from the United States, killing four people.

In a statement published on social media, the Cuban government described the boat as having a license plate from the state of Florida, a peninsula roughly 145 kilometres, or 90 miles, from the island.

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It also accused the speedboat of firing the first shot, precipitating an exchange of gunfire.

“The crew of the violating speedboat opened fire on the Cuban personnel, resulting in the injury of the commander of the Cuban vessel,” the statement said.

“As of the time of this report, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed, and six were injured.”

It is so far unclear what activities the speedboat was engaged in, and the identities of those on board remain unknown.

But Wednesday’s incident is not the first time that the Cuban government has engaged in a gunfight after allegedly intercepting US boats entering its territory.

Still, the latest example could prove to be particularly contentious, given the heightened tensions over the last two months between the US and Cuba.

An investigation into Wednesday’s incident remains ongoing. The Interior Ministry, however, framed the border patrol’s actions as part of its larger defence of Cuba’s national sovereignty.

“In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region,” the ministry wrote.

The latest incident took place on Wednesday morning, offshore from the barrier island Cayo Falcones in the north-central Villa Clara province.

Tense relations with the US

The shootout comes at a delicate time for Cuba’s international relations, as it becomes increasingly isolated — and as the US threatens military action in Latin America.

One of Cuba’s closest regional allies, for instance, has seen upheaval at the hands of US forces. On January 3, US President Donald Trump authorised an early-morning military operation to abduct then-President Nicolas Maduro, transporting him to the US for trial.

Shortly after the attack, Trump and his officials issued statements suggesting they would welcome the fall of Cuba’s communist government.

“Look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a longtime anti-Cuba hawk, told reporters.

Trump, meanwhile, was more blunt. “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall,” he said in the immediate aftermath.

In the weeks since, the US announced it would cut off supplies of Venezuelan money and oil to Cuba, and on January 29, it imposed an oil blockade on the island, threatening Cuba’s trading partners with sanctions.

In an executive order, Trump accused Cuba of representing an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US, citing its ties with adversarial governments like those in Iran, China and Russia.

“The Government of Cuba has taken extraordinary actions that harm and threaten the United States,” Trump wrote in the order. “The regime aligns itself with — and provides support for — numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adverse to the United States.”

Cuba is one of several countries that have been subject to a “maximum pressure” campaign under Trump, who has sought to exert increasing influence over the Western Hemisphere.

Relations with the US, however, have long been tense. As far back as 1958, Cuba came under a US arms embargo that was later expanded in the 1960s to full trade embargo, spanning all products and services.

The embargo cut Cuba off from one of its closest trading partners at the time. Officials and human rights experts have also argued that the historically long embargo worsened humanitarian conditions on the island, which has suffered from a weakened economy and supply shortages.

History of shootouts

The US government, however, has cited a history of human rights abuses on the island as a reason for maintaining economic sanctions against Cuba.

In 2021, during Trump’s first term, Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior and its leader, Minister Lazaro Alvarez Casas, were both sanctioned as a “perpetrators of serious human rights abuse and corruption around the world”.

The Cuban government has faced decades of accusations that it restricts free speech and violently represses dissent.

It also has a history of engaging in violent shootouts with boats it accuses of violating its territorial sovereignty.

The political repression, combined with economic turmoil, has forced many Cubans to flee the country over the past six decades.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s, for instance, one of Cuba’s main industries, tourism, saw a stark drop in revenue.

That, in turn, caused dire shortages of basic supplies, prompting nearly two million people — more than 10 percent of the population — to leave the island.

But the Cuban government has, at times, responded with violence to irregular migration from the island.

In June 2022, for instance, Cuba reported two shootouts in quick succession involving speedboats accused of smuggling its nationals abroad. One, on June 18 of that year, resulted in an officer wounded. A second, on June 27, resulted in the death of a person aboard the speedboat.

In such cases, the Cuban government has typically framed the violence as spurred by the actions of the speedboats in question. It has also cited the need to protect its territory and stability.

There are activist networks, particularly in the large Cuban American community in South Florida, that have worked for decades to help refugees escape from the island.

But they too have experienced losses. One of the most famous incidents came in 1996, when a small plane piloted by the activist group Brothers to the Rescue was shot down by the Cuban military.