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US INDICTMENT OF RAÚL CASTRO COMES AMID A LONG HISTORY OF AMERICAN
AGGRESSION AGAINST CUBA  
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Kevin A. Young
June 8, 2026
The Conversation
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_ Indicting Cuban officials over the incident is disingenuous, given
the provocations by Brothers to the Rescue and U.S. actions against
Cuba, which are in direct violation of international and U.S. laws. _

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The Trump administration on May 20, 2026, indicted former Cuban
President Raúl Castro for murder
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based on the downing of two planes near the Cuban coastline in 1996
that killed four people.

As a historian of Latin America and U.S. foreign policy
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the indictment may be the prelude to direct U.S. military action
against Cuba.

Before Castro, the last U.S. indictment of a Latin American leader
occurred in January 2026, when a U.S. attorney
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appointed by President Donald Trump charged Venezuela’s Nicolás
Maduro with narco-terrorism. Those charges were promptly followed by
U.S. military strikes
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Venezuela and the abduction of Maduro
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Since January, the U.S. has ended the flow of Venezuelan oil to Cuba
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and has used economic
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and military
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pressure to prevent other nations from trading with the island. And
Trump recently threatened
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a “friendly takeover
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of Cuba.

I believe that what’s missing from most recent analysis of this
situation is the history of U.S. aggression against Cuba
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context for understanding the Trump administration’s recent
escalations.

‘Striking at Cuba constantly’

In 1823, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams identified Cuba
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as “an object of transcendent importance to the political and
commercial interests of our Union.” The 1959 Cuban Revolution
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U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and replaced him with Fidel
Castro, brother of Raúl, directly challenged those interests
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by asserting political autonomy and expropriating private property.

State Department officials observed
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that “the majority of Cubans support Castro” because of the
government’s redistributive measures
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and its “real honesty, courtesy, and idealism.” One official
warned
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“that if the Cuban revolution is successful other countries in Latin
America and perhaps elsewhere will use it as a model and we should
decide whether or not we wish to have the Cuban revolution succeed.”

They decided quickly. By December 1959, President Dwight
Eisenhower’s CIA director had approved plans to overthrow the Castro
government
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U.S. policy thereafter included direct sponsorship
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for Cuban paramilitary groups.

[Several men in a black and white photo inspect the wreckage of a
plane.]
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An American plane is shot down on Playa Girón during the Bay of Pigs
invasion in April 1961. Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty
Images
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The CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion
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the most famous episode. The U.S. trained 1,400 Cuban exiles to invade
Cuba, hoping to ignite a nationwide rebellion. Instead, Cubans rallied
behind the government.

Though U.S. analysts often criticize the invasion
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failed
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it was also a major crime under international law
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Several hundred Cubans were killed
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Fear of a repeat invasion also led Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to
send nuclear missiles to Cuba
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precipitating the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962
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nearly
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led to nuclear war.

Longtime CIA official Richard Helms
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later testified that in the early 1960s, “We had task forces that
were striking at Cuba constantly. We were attempting to blow up power
plants, we were attempting to ruin sugar mills, we were attempting to
do all kinds of things during this period. This was a matter of
American Government policy.”

In 1976, Luis Posada Carriles
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and Orlando Bosch
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exiles, planned the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner
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that killed all 73 people aboard.

“The C.I.A. taught us everything,” Posada Carriles said
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later. “They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in
acts of sabotage.”

Both men were given refuge
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in the United States for the rest of their lives.

The Bay of Pigs invasion and the airline bombing violate the core
principles of international law, including prohibitions on the
unprovoked “threat or use of force
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punishment
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The U.S. government itself defines “international terrorism
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acts” intended “to influence the policy of a government by
intimidation or coercion” or to “intimidate or coerce a civilian
population.”

By that definition, its Cuba policy qualifies.

By ‘every possible means’

Another U.S. method of striking at Cuba was through economic
sanctions, first imposed on the country in 1960. That year, a State
Department official wrote
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that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken
the economic life of Cuba” so as “to bring about hunger,
desperation and overthrow of government.” The logic of collective
punishment was clear: make Cubans suffer enough that they rebel
against Castro.

[Three billboards of three men appear on a weathered wall outdoors.]
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Images of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Raúl Castro and Fidel
Castro adorn the state building in Havana, Cuba, on May 20, 2026. AP
Photo/Ramon Espinosa
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This policy is now more aggressive than ever. The tightening of U.S.
sanctions
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since Trump’s first term has reduced Cuba’s income from tourism
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remittances and overseas medical missions. Now, by choking off
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the supply of fuel, the U.S. has critically weakened the healthcare
and sanitation systems that depend on electricity.

Medical professionals
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and United Nations observers
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of ventilators and incubators left without power, pharmacies empty and
healthcare workers forced into “horrible decisions
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about who lives and dies. A recent medical study reported a 148%
increase in infant mortality
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and 2025, meaning that about 1,800 infants
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died who otherwise would have lived.

‘I was trained as a terrorist by the United States’

The focus of the recent U.S. indictment against Raúl Castro
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was the incident on Feb. 24, 1996, when the Cuban military, which was
headed by Castro, shot down those two planes.

The planes were operated by Brothers to the Rescue
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an anti-Castro group of Cuban exiles who said they were aiding Cuban
emigres trying to reach Florida. The group’s head, and one of the
surviving pilots that day, was José Basulto, a veteran CIA asset and
participant in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

In 1962, Basulto fired a cannon and machine gun “16 times
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Cuban hotel, he later recounted. “I was trained as a terrorist by
the United States,” Basulto once told an interviewer
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Basulto’s plane had entered Cuban airspace on Feb. 24, as a U.S.
customs service specialist later testified
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Correspondence from the day shows that Basulto did so knowingly
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The previous July, he had told
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a TV audience, “We want confrontation.”

While the Cuban military could have deescalated
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the situation more carefully that day, Cuba had been trying
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for months to stop the violations of its airspace
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I believe indicting Cuban officials over the incident is disingenuous,
given the provocations by Brothers to the Rescue and U.S. actions
against Cuba, which are in direct violation of international
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and U.S. [[link removed]] laws that
prohibit threats, nondefensive violence and collective punishment.[The
Conversation]

Kevin A. Young
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Associate Professor of History, _UMass Amherst_
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This article is republished from The Conversation
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the original article
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* Raul Castro
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* Cuba
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* U.S. imperialism
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