Same Movie, Different Actors

José R. Cabañas Rodriguez on April 30, 2026 from Havana

Just 36 years ago, with the collapse of the USSR and the so-called socialist bloc, Cubans, organized under the guidance of the CIA and other federal agencies in Miami, began a special celebration under the slogan “Cuba next.” What they expected did not happen in 1990, nor in 1991. Twenty-four months after the initial predictions, some began to wonder why the force of gravity wasn’t working in the Cuban case.

The year 1992, after nearly fifteen and a half years of Republican dominance in the White House, was once again an election year, and the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, aspired to shift the balance of power in their favor.

At that time, the so-called Cuban lobby was led by the National Cuban-American Foundation (CANF), an organization conceived by Ronald Reagan’s team in 1980 to secure as many votes as possible from Cubans living in Florida and among other Latino groups. At the helm of this organization, without an election or public consultation, was placed the son of a former officer in Fulgencio Batista’s army, who had received training as part of Brigade 2506 but never landed at Playa Girón because the CIA included him in the so-called Group of 40, a sort of cadre school to form the next Cuban government.

Under the Foundation, the cream of the Fortune 500 in Coral Gables came together, and little by little it ceased to be a small group of pro-Reagan activists to become an elite that would control various economic sectors of South Florida, with investments in the Dominican Republic, South America, Spain, and beyond. Their dollars shifted from the sale of used cars to the purchase of warehouses in nearby ports, and several who barely spoke English began sending their children to elite universities.

The foundation’s leaders came to firmly believe that the commercial power they had built around that and other organizations would serve as the foundation for expanding their wealth in a “liberated Cuba”—a result of the punitive actions of their leaders, not of any new landing by troops in camouflage uniforms.

For that reason, they pressed the campaign team of then-President George Bush, a candidate for reelection, to pass a bill limiting the presence of third countries in foreign investments, which were beginning to flow into Cuba as a result of the opening that was taking shape at that time.

The Foundation identified Democratic Congressman Robert Torricelli, who had visited Cuba shortly before, as the legislative vehicle to introduce the proposed text and see it through to approval. All it took was a yacht ride off the coast of Miami and the modest sum of $3 million to turn the unknown politician into a legislative “Tomahawk.” At that time, Bush Sr., who had previously headed the CIA and served as an operative among the Cubans who settled in Miami in the 1960s, did not consider that to be the best approach to the Cuban situation.

Then, a rebellion broke out among his former subordinates—something unthinkable in the 1980s. The Foundation’s executives, who were now able to sign checks with six zeros, went “across the aisle” and approached the Democratic campaign leaders with an offer they couldn’t refuse. In exchange for a modest campaign contribution, they wanted to know if the former governor of Arkansas would be willing to consider the Torricelli bill for his signature should he be elected.

Between the financial contribution and the Clintons’ belief that Bill would have nearly lost his reelection as governor due to the local crisis in Arkansas caused by the forced detention of “Marielitos” in the state’s prisons in 1980, the candidate decided to support the anti-Cuban monstrosity, which would make the multilateral impact of the blockade against Cuba even clearer. This decision ultimately led President-elect Bush to change his mind and finally sign the text one month before the presidential election.

Despite this last-minute effort, Bill Clinton was elected with a significant number of Hispanic and Cuban votes. He maintained the same “wait-and-see” policy toward Cuba, hoping that the economic crisis the island was suffering would lead to the long-awaited regime change. But what ensued was a mass exodus in 1994 that, once again, was used as an argument by businessmen linked to the CANF to justify military intervention against Cuba. In fact, the foundation’s leader made a little trip to the Oval Office and accompanied his demands with a few taps on the table in front of Bill.

The story that follows is well known: thousands of so-called rafters were transferred to the Guantanamo Naval Base, and after negotiations (not a war) took place, their entry into U.S. territory was legalized. Another bilateral crisis had been overcome.

Months went by and the Cuban apple still wouldn’t fall. The same local actors in Florida, who had already established a significant presence beyond state borders—and even beyond the country—renewed their white-collar anti-Castro efforts. They identified the equally corrupt Dan Burton and the ultra conservative  Jesse Helms as the leaders of a new legislative initiative that brought together every possible variation of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade against the island. Such was the anti-Cuban voracity that they went so far as to violate a U.S. constitutional precept: the text limited the executive branch’s authority in conducting a matter of foreign policy, which was clearly the president’s prerogative.

For this primary reason, among others, the bill would never be approved by majorities in either the Democratic or Republican ranks. So the foundation’s leaders, through their ties to other anti-Cuban organizations, began laying the groundwork to create an irregular situation that would cause federal politicians to act more like a herd in a frenzy than through reason.

In late 1995, the Foundation’s never-elected leader appeared in an interview on a local Miami TV channel before a former mayor reduced to a third-rate journalist, proclaiming that the economic crisis in Cuba was so severe that the Cuban military had only two MIG-23 fighter jets, one located in Havana, and the second in Holguín, and that depending on the day of the month, there would be fuel for only one.

The story, very similar to the thousands now proliferating thanks to the ingenuity of Meta, X, and other digital armies, struck a deep chord with several terrorist groups of former Batista loyalists, who were still active in Florida and whom the British-aligned Clinton team was unable to control. The flights near Cuba by the small group known as Brothers to the Rescue—which had supposedly emerged to assist Cuban migrants on the high seas and later began distributing leaflets and other materials over Cuban waters and territory—became increasingly provocative.

Then the inevitable happened. On February 24, 1996, the same day that a group of Cubans residing in the United States was in Cuba participating in a seminar of the Participatory Democracy series, three Brothers to the Rescue light aircraft violated Cuban airspace with new provocations. Two of them, piloted by inexperienced pilots, were shot down by the Cuban Air Force. A third plane, carrying the group’s main instigator, was already outside Cuban territorial waters. He never explained how he led his young recruits to certain death while he himself emerged unscathed.

Although all the evidence pointed to the contrary, the “news” that U.S. civilian aircraft had been shot down by Cuban communists in international waters had already been fabricated. The uproar broke the deadlock in Congress; a new wave of collective and irrational hysteria swept through the lawmakers, and the Helms-Burton Act (HBA) was passed overnight.

If further proof of what happened is needed, one need only review the images of President Clinton signing the “law,” in which all the “Cuban-Americans” present (including the ousted Bob Menéndez) look at him with a “we’ll f— you up” expression, and the president looks at the document with a “yes, you did” expression.

For the spiritual fathers of the HBA, this would be the millstone around the neck that would definitively sink the Cuban project. However, there was no immediate evidence that such an outcome would occur. By a twist of fate, a few months after the legislative Bay of Pigs, the CANF leader fell terminally ill. On his deathbed in the comfortable Coral Gables, faced with the failure of all his previous attempts, he invited his allies and subordinates to carry out any violent act against Cuba that would lead to the “end of Castroism” within his lifetime.

In the face of the complicit paralysis of U.S. federal agencies, bombings targeting Cuban hotels took place in 1997, resulting in the death of an Italian tourist, significant property damage, and widespread public alarm. Cuba, the country under attack (and not the other way around), expanded and strengthened its defense measures, including the gathering of information on terrorist organizations operating freely on U.S. soil, which, once obtained, was shared with federal agencies that traveled to Havana.

Under these circumstances, a situation arose once again in which the dog bit the master. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, more interested in finding the likely sources of the information that had been shared with it than in the likely perpetrators of the crimes against Cuba, identified some of them.

In 1998, local FBI officials in Miami of Latin American origin—who were closely and corruptly linked to the remnants of the CANF and other anti-Cuban splinter groups—showed greater loyalty to these groups than to their superiors in Washington and leaked information regarding the identification and capture of “Cuban spies.”

What could have resulted in joint actions to combat terrorism instead turned into portraying the aggressor as the victim, followed by a rigged trial in Miami against those who risked their lives to defend their country and a series of events that spanned 16 years, culminating in the inevitable: the release of Cuba’s National Heroes.

And the reader may ask: what does this account of known events contribute to the current situation?

Well, it is striking that after what happened in Caracas on January 3 of this year, the presidential declaration labeling Cuba as an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” plus the ensuing oil blockade, the renewed activism of small Cuban terrorist groups in the United States has not appeared on the radar of U.S. federal agencies, and an attempt to infiltrate Cuban territory was actually carried out on February 25.

The fabricated news story covering the incident, just as in 1996, claimed that a civilian vessel, loaded with innocent people, had been attacked by the regime’s repressive forces. But this time, the compelling evidence of the aggression did not vanish into the sea. Its immediate presentation to the press and, once again, its transmission to U.S. federal agencies were met with silence across the airwaves.

It suffices to mention these facts, compare situations, and rethink scenarios to recall that although there is a strategic convergence between the heirs of the state policy to destroy the Cuban Revolution and those who created the hate industry, on many occasions tactical interests are not the same, the timing of actions differs, and tiny dwarfs have tripped up giants.

Once again, amid a severe economic crisis in Cuba, voices are heard celebrating prematurely, but frustration with the workings of the law of gravity also leads some to try to provoke extraordinary events between Washington and Havana.

American historians who are well-versed in the presence of Cuban émigrés in the context of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, their involvement among those who illegally entered the Watergate building, and the foiled attempts on Fidel Castro’s life—as well as many other events—know better than politicians that the agenda of certain sectors in Miami often differs from, and can even influence or precipitate, decisions in Washington.

José R. Cabañas Rodríguez is Director of the International Policy Research Center (CIPI) in Havana, Cuba and former Cuban Ambassador to the US.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English