The official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba, Granma, published a commentary on Tuesday warning President Joe Biden that the regime “has the weapons … to repel any aggression” and is willing to engage in a conflict with America.
Biden has not adopted a coherent policy towards Cuba, which for the past 62 years has endured the repression of a violent, anti-American communist regime. Following nationwide protests calling for the end of communism on July 11, which some estimates suggest attracted nearly 200,000 participants nationwide, Cuban-Americans on the mainland have encouraged Biden to consider various avenues of humanitarian and military aid for the protesters. Those asking Biden to implement a Cuba policy were in part reacting to the Castro regime’s response to the protests, largely defined by police brutality including violent door-to-door raids, torture and sexual abuse of prisoners, public beatings, and opening fire on peaceful crowds.
Castro regime figurehead Miguel Díaz-Canel issued a call on national television on the evening of July 11 for civilians to violently assault anyone considered a “counterrevolutionary,” labeling it an “order of combat” in defense of the “revolution.”
Biden has so far responded to the ongoing protests in Cuba by holding a meeting with Cuban-American celebrities and sanctioning three individuals already under sanctions set in place by former President Donald Trump.
The column in Granma on Tuesday accused Biden, despite his lack of decisive action towards the regime, of being “poorly advised, erratic, irresolute,” and “an ally of the Republican right and Trumpism.”
“Anti-Cuban lawmakers … Miami haters, supported by representatives of the Trumpist far-right of the United States, fueled by the resentment that defines them, continue to demand that the government of Joe Biden intervene militarily in Cuba,” the article read. “A wave of bellicose hysteria sweeps the media and, above all, social media. We have seen the very images of Dante’s circles of Hell, where some of the enthusiasts promoting death will end up going.”
The Cuban Communist Party is officially an atheist entity and does not recognize the existence of Hell.
The column concluded warning Biden that the Castro regime would embrace a war with the United States.
“We are lovers of peace, we want to build a prosperous future for our children and grandchildren, we want fair relations, based on principles, with your country,” the column said, addressing Biden. “But we are not an unarmed people, Mr. Biden, we have weapons and, more importantly, the souls ready to repel any aggression. Do not be fooled: the adventure would be unpayable for you.”
The official position of the Cuban Communist Party is that the protests of July 11, which swept dozens of cities nationwide, were a U.S. intelligence operation organized by Cuban-American terrorists, not a legitimate manifestation of the Cuban people. Juventud Rebelde, another state propaganda outlet, described the protests as “actions against the Cuban Revolution … oriented from the United States by elements of the Cuban-American right to try to destabilize the country.” Another propaganda outlet, the Havana Tribune, referred to the overwhelmingly peaceful protests as an act of foreign “terrorism.”
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez has both accused American agents of instigating the protests and denied any violence against protesters, complaining that he has seen “worse [repression] in Europe,” without offering any examples.
The U.S. State Department formally recognizes the Castro regime as a state sponsor of terrorism alongside Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Cuba’s most well-documented terrorist tie is with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a narco-terrorist organization whose leaders lived in Havana for years following a joint U.S. campaign with the administration of former President Álvaro Uribe that largely disabled the group in the 2000s. With Raúl Castro’s intervention, another Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, offered the FARC a “peace deal” that allowed the leaders to return home as senators, fueling a drug and violence boom in the country ongoing today.
The Cuban Communist Party is also a close ally of Iran’s and is known to have ties to the jihadist organization Hezbollah. A leaked Obama-era intelligence report from 2016 warned that Hezbollah could launch attacks against America from Cuba. That same year, a leak from the now-defunct law firm Mossack Fonseca known as the Panama papers revealed that Cuba had bankrolled an operation to grant Hezbollah members legitimate Venezuelan passports, despite them being citizens of Mideast states with no ties to Venezuela, allowing them to move more freely in the Western Hemisphere.
Cuba is also formally an ally of several enemies of the United States, most prominently Russia and China. A report published last week by the independent outlet ADN Cuba revealed that China’s People’s Armed Police (PAP) had aided Cuba by training its “black berets,” a repressive police force used to disappear political dissidents. Chinese state media had openly admitted to using the PAP for law enforcement outreach in Cuba over a decade ago.
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