Frances Robles and Patricia Mazzei
Key West: The men arrived in Cuban waters aboard a speedboat that apparently had been stolen the night before in the Florida Keys.
The Cuban government said 10 Cubans had left from the United States on a Florida-registered vessel armed with assault rifles, handguns, improvised explosive devices, bulletproof vests, telescopic sights and camouflage uniforms. Their goal when they arrived on Wednesday (Cuban time) was, the government said, “to carry out an infiltration for terrorist purposes”.
They opened fire on the Cuban coast guard, the government claimed. Four of the men died and six more were wounded in the gunfight.
A day later, few details have emerged about the deadly shoot-out, raising questions about who the men were and how and why they sailed to Cuba’s shores. Were they freelance militants with a poorly laid out plan? Part of a carefully set trap by the Cuban government at a time of increased tensions with the United States?
The episode was the latest in a decades-long, often bellicose history between Cuba’s government and militant exiles determined to take it down. For years, Cuban exiles have tried to infiltrate Cuba; planted bombs in Havana; and even plotted to assassinate Fidel Castro.
One of the survivors was initially erroneously reported to be Roberto Azcorra Consuegra, a 31-year-old activist who fled Cuba in 2017 and was home in Miami this week, fielding calls from reporters.
The inclusion of Azcorra’s name among the list of the detained raised questions about what the Cuban government knew about the plot. Having his name, even though he was not on the boat, suggested that government agents could have known about the operation in advance, experts said.
In 1996, after the Cuban government shot down two planes belonging to the exile organisation Brothers to the Rescue, it quickly emerged that a Cuban intelligence agent had infiltrated the organisation and knew about the planned attack.
“Supposedly, I am jailed, detained and injured,” Azcorra said in an interview on Wednesday night. On Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossio posted a statement admitting the error.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel took to social media to reaffirm Cuba’s sovereignty. “Cuba will defend itself with determination and firmness against any terrorist and mercenary aggression that seeks to affect its sovereignty and national stability,” he said.
Azcorra described himself as an activist determined to topple the 67-year-old communist government by methods that went beyond picket signs and slogans, but he said he could not discuss it further without first getting a lawyer. He would not say whether he knew the men, but he acknowledged that the Cuban government must have had his name because it expected him to be on board the doomed vessel.
Azcorra said the inclusion of his name was “not a mistake”.
“They know exactly who I am,” he said. “They either confused me with someone else, or they thought I was going to be there.”
Cuban authorities identified the other survivors aboard the Florida-registered speedboat as Amijail Sánchez González, Leordan Cruz Gómez, Conrado Galindo Sariol, José Manuel Rodríguez Castelló, Roberto Álvarez Ávila and Christian Acosta Guevara. Another man, Duniel Hernández Santos, arrived in Cuba in advance of the confrontation, the government said.
Four more men died. They have been identified as Pavel Alling Peña, Michel Ortega Casanova, Héctor Cruz Correa and Ledián Padrón Guevara.
At least two of the men, including one who died, were US citizens. One was on a fiancé visa, and the others were believed to be legal permanent residents, according to a US official.
“They are brave men,” Azcorra said.
Public records indicate that most of the men appear to have lived in Florida, though Acosta is identified as residing in Texas.
US court records show some of the men had committed minor traffic or vehicle-related offences. Cuban officials have said several of the men had criminal histories, but they did not release documentation to support those claims.
One of the men who died, Ortega, was a truck driver who had lived in the United States for a long time, according to his brother-in-law.
A 7.3 metre boat they travelled on was reported stolen on Wednesday out of Big Pine Key, in the Lower Florida Keys, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. On Thursday, sheriff’s deputies and agents from the Department of Homeland Security were at the property where the boat owner kept the vessel.
The owner told the police he first noticed the boat missing on Wednesday morning, and saw a white Chevy truck belonging to one of his employees, a tile worker, parked at the property, according to the police report. He assumed his employee had taken the boat without permission. The owner went back later in the day after news reports emerged with the boat’s registration number. He then went to the police.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office identified the owner of the truck as Héctor Cruz Correa, 42, and named him a “suspect” in the theft of the boat. Cuban authorities later named Cruz Correa, who has two children in Cuba, as one of the men who died.
Galindo, 58, a delivery van driver, was among those injured, according to the Cuban government. According to his wife, Ana Seguí, he left his home in Miami around noon on Sunday and never returned.
“He told me he was going to work,” she said.
When he did not come back, she tried calling but his phone seemed to be turned off. Then, on Wednesday, she heard the Cuban government name her husband as one of the men on the boat who had been captured.
Galindo, who is from Camagüey, left Cuba in 2016 after being imprisoned on the island for eight years, she said. He never went back.
Standing on the front stoop of their modest home in Miami, Seguí looked exhausted and distraught. She said she could not know if the Cuban government’s account was true and she was waiting to learn more. No US authorities had come to see her, she said.
“I don’t know how this came about,” she said, adding that Galindo did not own weapons and nor did he have an interest in them. “Guns, what guns?” she said.
Her husband had at least twice been a guest on a radio program called Voices that Inspire on the US-financed Radio Martí. Galindo was introduced as a former political prisoner who had served time with a well-known activist, Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as Antúnez, who interviewed him on the show. Galindo told García that only clandestine activities would work to topple the government.
Sánchez González, another person the Cuban government said had been detained, has been accused in the past of inciting violence in Cuba from Florida, according to news reports at the time. In 2022, Cuban authorities said a detainee in Cuba had purportedly confessed to his crimes, saying Sánchez reached out to him on social media and put him up to it, according to a news report.
Both Sánchez and Cruz Gómez were wanted in Cuba, and their names had been provided to US authorities in 2023 and 2025, yet they “enjoyed impunity”, Fernández de Cossio said.
Marcell Felipe, a prominent leader in the Cuban exile community in Miami, said the boat gunfight reminded him of prior episodes in which the Cuban government accused Miami exiles of plotting terrorism on the island.
“What I do know is that it’s not the first time that the Cuban regime does an operation orchestrated by Cuban intelligence,” Felipe said.
“These operations are never done exclusively by agents of the regime. They are done by agents of the regime who recruit willing participants and send them to their deaths,” he said.
Wednesday’s episode came amid an extraordinarily tense moment between the two nations. The Trump administration has cut off fuel imports to Cuba, with the aim of crippling the government.
The country is going through its worst economic crisis in decades.
The United States had shown a “willingness” to help Cuba clarify the matter, Fernández de Cossio said on Thursday.
“An investigation is under way to clarify the facts with the utmost rigour,” he said. “Cuba has a duty and responsibility to protect its territorial waters.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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