Cuba on Thursday publicly received the remains of 32 citizens killed in the US military operation that toppled Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, turning Havana's main airport into a stage for grief and political messaging. State television carried live images of small flag-draped boxes arriving from Venezuela on Thursday, as top officials including President Miguel Díaz-Canel looked on, the New York Times reports. "The enemy speaks euphorically of high-precision operations," said Maj. Gen. Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, the interior minister. "We, on the other hand, speak of faces, of families who lost their father, their son, their husband, their brother."
The Cubans killed were among thousands the nation has long sent to Venezuela in exchange for subsidized oil. Officially, many serve as doctors and teachers, but they have also included security and intelligence personnel. As US pressure on him increased, Maduro had bolstered his personal security with more Cuban bodyguards and embedded additional Cuban counterintelligence officers in Venezuela's armed forces. The remains were taken Thursday to the Ministry of the Armed Forces in Havana, per the BBC, where people waited in the rain to pay their respects.
Maduro's ouster has hit Havana hard, per the Times. Venezuelan fuel shipments, once covering about a third of Cuba's daily needs, have all but stopped. Energy expert Jorge Piñon of the University of Texas at Austin called the loss of that oil catastrophic for Cuba's already battered economy, which analysts say is in free fall. President Trump has pledged to enforce a strict break between Caracas and Havana, declaring on social media that "no more oil or money" will flow to Cuba from Venezuela and that the US military would help enforce that separation. Cubans plan what they say will be a large demonstration Friday across from the US Embassy in Havana, per the AP.
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