The military assault was staged in Venezuela, knocking out President Nicolas Maduro’s security detail, but one of the biggest blows was felt in an unlikely place: Cuba.
According to official reports from the Cuban government, at least 32 of the 80 people killed in U.S. strikes on Venezuela over the weekend were members of Cuba’s armed forces or its interior ministry. The sheer loss of Cuban life illustrates how heavily Mr. Maduro had come to rely on agents from another country to protect him.
Uncertain of who at home he could rely on as the United States built up a military presence in the Caribbean, Mr. Maduro increasingly turned to a country known for its highly trained and efficient security apparatus, though its forces ultimately were no match for the United States military.
Cuba’s role in Venezuelan security dates back more than two decades.
When Venezuela’s socialist firebrand president, Hugo Chávez, was briefly toppled in a coup in 2002, he turned to Cuba for help. Cuba stepped in, sending military intelligence officers and other types of assistance. The goal: to help keep a fellow socialist regime in power.
And if there was one thing the Cuban government was good it, it was staying in power.
The revolutionary government there, which took power in 1959, had long defeated repeated attempts by the U.S. government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, to take down its leader, Fidel Castro. Cuba developed a keen specialty in all matters of security, particularly intelligence gathering and repressing dissent.
“This went from a personal love affair to a state-to-state institutional relationship, in which Cubans, among other things, provided critical support in all things related to the military and to the security apparatus system of Venezuela,” said Frank O. Mora, a former senior U.S. Defense Department official who is now a professor at Florida International University. “At that point after the coup is when Chávez really begins to consolidate his power.”
The Cuban government started sending tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, sports figures and other advisers to Venezuela in exchange for oil discounts. Experts who have studied the agreements say it has never been clear whether the personal presidential bodyguards — essentially a Venezuelan version of the Secret Service — were part of the deal.
As Venezuelan oil production dropped, so did the number of Cuban doctors working in the South American country.
“Venezuela is the most important ally Cuba has had in Latin America because of the trade of oil for medical services,” said William LeoGrande, a Cuba scholar at American University. “The fact that they would provide internal security at Venezuela’s request makes perfect sense.”
Cuba had played such a role before: Its forces helped protect Angola’s first president, Agostinho Neto, in the 1970s. They also helped train and equip the personal guards of Salvador Allende, the leftist Chilean president who died during an American-backed coup.
Mr. Maduro, who took office in 2013 after Mr. Chávez’s death, actually had stronger ties to Cuba than his predecessor did.
As a young bus driver in Venezuela, he traveled to Cuba for training as a labor leader, attending a communist party training institute known as the Ñico López School.
Maria C. Werlau, a Cuba researcher who wrote a book on the relationship between the two countries, said that Cubans were posted in most Venezuelan ministries and in the national oil company. “Cuba trained a lot of people in Venezuela’s military counterintelligence, in the National Guard, the police and armed forces,” Ms. Werlau said.
There are believed to have been 140 Cubans in Mr. Maduro’s personal guard. But Ms. Werlau cautioned against taking the Cuban government at its word on the number of dead, noting that the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, posted on social media that 85 Cubans had died in the blasts.
During the first Trump administration, the national security adviser, John R. Bolton, accused Cuba of having “20,000 thugs” in Venezuela to prop up the Maduro regime. Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, called him a “pathological liar.”
Experts say Mr. Bolton was probably wrong about the numbers. While there was no question about the presence of members of Cuba’s interior ministry — who are intelligence agents — there was no evidence of large numbers of Cuban troops in Venezuela.
In announcing the deaths of the 32 people Sunday night, the Cuban government said that they had worked for both the interior ministry and the armed forces.
“Our compatriots fulfilled their duty with dignity and heroism and fell, after fierce resistance, in direct combat against the attackers or as a result of the bombings,” said Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Ms. Werlau offered another assessment.
“They failed miserably,” she said. “They could have hidden Maduro properly. Obviously, they paid a very high price.”
Frances Robles is a Times reporter covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She has reported on the region for more than 25 years.
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