Was the Cuban Exile Attack an Attempt to Spur US Action?

A Florida-tagged speedboat attacked Cuban border patrol forces in Cuban waters on Wednesday, leading to a shootout in which border guards killed four people and injured six others on the boat, according to Cuban authorities.

As details emerge, experts stress the incident follows a track record of exile-led attacks on the island nation — which, this time around, might spark further hostilities between the U.S. and Cuba.

“Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, there is a long record of Cuban exiles and others hostile to Havana attacking Cuba and drawing retaliatory attacks, both sides then using the incidents to fuel their propaganda,” Alan McPherson, a professor at Temple University who specializes in the history of U.S.-Latin America relations, told Responsible Statecraft.

“Given the heightened tension between the Trump administration and Cuba, one hopes that the alleged attackers were not trying to prompt military action by the U.S. government or, worse, that they were acting as agents of it. It is almost certain that they were at least inspired by the recent moves by the administration to hasten the end of the Cuban regime,” McPherson said.

The number of apparently armed people on the boat indicates this was a “Freedom Flotilla, a group of individuals who are seeking to … intervene and to invade into Cuban territory and to recruit people on the island to rise up in arms with them, to take some piece of territory or to attack public or state institutions,” said Lee Schlenker, a research associate with the Global South program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

“It’s curious that the U.S. Coast Guard didn’t — to our knowledge — seek to stop this vessel from entering Cuban territorial waters, given this would clearly be interpreted as a provocation given the long history of these sorts of incursions from Cuban exile organizations,” Schlenker said.

“Even if it were just a migrant rescue mission, as is likely to be claimed by authorities in South Florida, this is also a violation of a number of U.S. laws, and Cuban laws as well,” he added. “Greater clarity by the relevant U.S. authorities is urgent.”

Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., cited the episode as a means to call for regime change in Cuba, writing: “This regime must be relegated to the dust bin of history!”

Meanwhile, tensions between the U.S. and Cuba are already sky high.

“Previous incidents like this have inflamed the Cuban America community and increased pressures on U.S. politicians to tougher measures toward Cuba. But short of some kind of military strike, there is not much room left for U.S. escalation,” William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert at American University and nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute, told RS. “The U.S. attempt to blockade all oil shipments to Cuba is strangling its economy and risking a humanitarian crisis.”

In January, Trump administration officials suggested that Cuba could be next in line to fall after the U.S. military operation to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela.