MIAMI (AP) — A hijacked vessel carrying 10 individuals and armed with weapons left the Florida Keys bound for Cuba, but deadly violence broke out before the boat could reach its destination. Cuban authorities claim the passengers were terrorists attempting to enter their nation illegally.
The deadly incident occurred Wednesday as U.S.-Cuba relations remain strained. With the Trump administration taking a harder line against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, focus has returned to Cuba as America’s longtime ideological opponent in the region. This has renewed scrutiny of Florida’s Cuban exile community, particularly radical factions that have historically pursued violent means to topple the island’s communist regime.
Military-style operations, attention-grabbing demonstrations and legally questionable protests have occurred for generations across the Florida straits. These activities typically involve hardline exiles, including some who initially fought alongside Fidel Castro’s revolutionary forces in 1959 but later turned against him when he aligned Cuba with the Soviet Union.
However, such aggressive approaches have diminished since the Cold War ended, prompting many Miami residents to question whether Cuban intelligence services manufactured the armed assault story.
“Cuban Americans today are, whether on the left or on the right, really focused on trying to influence U.S. policy rather than thinking that somehow paramilitary action by small groups are gonna overthrow the Cuban government,” said William LeoGrande, an American University government professor who specializes in Cuba.
The gunfight resulted in four fatalities and numerous unanswered questions. Cuban officials characterized most boat occupants as dangerous criminals. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose political career developed within Miami’s Cuban exile community, quickly questioned Cuba’s version of events, promising American authorities would examine what he called a “highly unusual” maritime confrontation.
Anti-revolutionary organizations — including groups like Alpha 66 and Omega 7 — maintained small memberships but reached peak influence during the 1970s and 1980s. Their power diminished after the Reagan administration imprisoned their leadership for domestic terrorist activities, including a failed Castro assassination attempt during his 1979 United Nations visit and the murder of a Cuban diplomat in New York one year later.
Antonio Tang enlisted with Alpha 66 after escaping Cuba and seeking refuge in Canada in 1981.
He received military training and guerrilla warfare instruction with the volunteer organization at an Everglades facility named Rumbo Sur — Direction South. Most of their operations failed before beginning, he explained.
“We were kind of amateurs — and no match for the Cuban military and interior ministry,” said Tang. “They always knew in advance what we were doing. Many folks ended up in jail.”
Ernesto Díaz, deputy secretary general of Alpha 66, described the 10 men as martyrs.
“It is an act of compassion for a Cuban people who are suffering,” Diaz, 86, said. “It was a sacrifice that has demonstrated the nobility and sensitivity towards freedom in Cuba.”
Former Cuban intelligence officer Enrique Garcia said a well-funded Cuban intelligence department — called Q-2 — spent decades co-opting armed resistance groups. In some cases, Cuban agents would fund weapon purchases and drive unsuspecting exiles into plots.
Agents infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue, which lost four members in 1996 when Cuban fighter jets shot down their airplanes in the Florida straits.
“This strategy —seemingly still in place— sought to portray the Cuban exile community as extremist and link the U.S. government and agencies to such activities,” said Garcia, who defected to the U.S. in 1989. “The U.S. intelligence community is aware and must have documented in its archives that this was a permanent modus operandi of the Cuban intelligence service.”
Garcia said he can’t remember any covert act of the sort Cuba has denounced in at least three decades.
He also finds the timing of the attack suspicious. The Trump administration has asserted almost unprecedented pressure on Havana to open its economy and relinquish almost seven decades of single-party rule.
Marina Luz Padron, whose ex-husband, Hector Cruz Correa, was among those reported killed, appealed for privacy as the family mourns. She described her ex-husband as an excellent father to their 4-year-old child, who still hasn’t been told about his fate.
“If he went to Cuba it was because he wanted freedom for his country,” Padron told The Associated Press in a brief interview.
Other family members spoke to Spanish language influencers in Miami describing their loved ones as peaceful and far removed from what Cuban officials denounced as a “terrorist” incursion.
Ibrahim Bosch, president of the Republican Party of Cuba, another exile group, said that Michel Ortega Casanova, one of those killed, was the leader of his party in Tampa for a while until he requested to be replaced so he could spend more time to with his family.
“He was an excellent person, very hardworking, very dedicated to his family,” Bosch said. “He always had the hope of freedom for Cuba.”
But Florida resident Misael Ortega Casanova said his brother — an American citizen who has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years and still agonizes over the suffering that Cubans endure — was on an “obsessive and diabolical” quest for Cuba’s freedom.
“They became so obsessed that they didn’t think about the consequences nor their own lives,” Misael told The Associated Press.
