Cuba acknowledged that 32 of its citizens \u2014 described by the government as members of the island\u2019s armed forces and intelligence services \u2014 were killed during the U.S. operation that seized Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in Caracas, declaring two days of national mourning in their honor.<\/p>\n
Havana did not specify where the personnel were stationed during the raid. But their deaths have renewed scrutiny of years of reporting and international investigations documenting Cuba\u2019s deep and covert involvement inside Venezuela\u2019s military and intelligence structures.<\/p>\n
Jorge Jraissati, a Venezuelan political analyst, said Cuba\u2019s intelligence role was critical to the consolidation of power first under Hugo Ch\u00e1vez and later under Maduro. ‘Experts usually link Cuba as the most important intelligence provider of Venezuela. This includes issues like running elections, building diplomatic leverage with other countries and keeping the security forces in check, among others,’ he told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Jraissati said any transition in Venezuela ‘would require the American government, in partnership with the Venezuelan people, to work together on minimizing the Cubans\u2019 influence over Venezuela\u2019s state apparatus and society at large.’<\/p>\n
A Reuters investigation published in August 2019 found that two confidential agreements signed in 2008 granted Cuba sweeping access to Venezuela\u2019s armed forces and intelligence services. Under those agreements, Cuban officials were authorized to train Venezuelan troops, restructure intelligence agencies and help build an internal surveillance system focused on monitoring Venezuela\u2019s own military, according to the report.<\/p>\n
Those arrangements played a central role in transforming Venezuela\u2019s military counterintelligence agency \u2014 the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) \u2014 into a force designed to detect dissent, instill fear within the ranks and ensure loyalty to the government, the investigation found.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The findings were later echoed by the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela, which said it reviewed a 2008 memorandum of understanding between Cuba and Venezuela. The U.N. mission reported that the agreement provided for Cuban advisory oversight in the restructuring of Venezuelan military intelligence, including the creation of new agencies, training of counterintelligence officers and assistance with surveillance and infiltration techniques.<\/p>\n
Former Venezuelan officials cited by Havana Times and El Toque have described Cuban advisers embedded across some of the country\u2019s most sensitive institutions, including the civilian intelligence service SEBIN, DGCIM, the defense ministry, ports and airports and Venezuela\u2019s national identification system.<\/p>\n
Human rights organizations and international investigators say those structures were central to the government\u2019s response to mass protests in 2014 and 2017, when Venezuelan security forces carried out widespread arrests and deadly crackdowns on demonstrators.<\/p>\n
The U.N. fact-finding mission documented patterns of extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detention and torture, and reported that Cuban advisers helped train Venezuelan personnel in methods used to track, interrogate and repress political opponents.<\/p>\n
Experts say Cuba\u2019s admission that its military and intelligence personnel were killed during a U.S. operation inside Venezuela has sharpened focus on the alliance\u2019s true depth, turning years of documentation into an immediate geopolitical issue.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cuba acknowledged that 32 of its citizens \u2014 described by the government as members of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stocksflux.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}