Cuba said on Sunday that 32 of its citizens had been killed in the U.S. attacks in Venezuela, including military or intelligence personnel — a rare public signal of Cuba’s importance to Venezuela and the Maduro government.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba said the casualties were personnel from the country’s armed forces or its interior ministry who were on a mission at the request of Venezuela, according to Cuban state media. “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,” Mr. Díaz-Canel said. He announced two days of mourning.
The revelation was an exceptional public admission by Cuba, whose leftist government has deep, longstanding ties with Venezuela’s, that its agents are in the country.
For years, Cuba has sent thousands of its citizens to Venezuela in exchange for oil. Many of them are teachers and doctors, but they also include intelligence agents and security guards.
The New York Times reported in December that, in the face of increasing U.S. military pressure, President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela had expanded Cuban bodyguards’ role in his personal security and placed more Cuban counterintelligence agents in Venezuela’s military. The idea, in essence, was to protect himself from a coup.
Now it appears that some of those Cubans may have died when U.S. forces swept in on Saturday. Venezuela said on Sunday that the preliminary death count in the attacks was 80.
Jack Nicas is The Times’s Mexico City bureau chief, leading coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
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