4 months ago
14
Cuba's government says the 10 people on a Florida-registered boat that opened fire on its soldiers were terrorists trying to infiltrate the island. The country says its forces killed four people.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The Cuban government says its border troops engaged in a gunfight with a boat registered in Florida and killed four people on board.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The government says they were, quote, "terrorists trying to infiltrate the island."
MARTIN: NPR's Eyder Peralta is following this story from his base in Mexico City. Eyder, good morning.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So how did this happen?
PERALTA: Well, the Cuban government says this boat was registered in Florida and it ventured into Cuban territorial waters. They say when Cuban border troops approached the vessel, the people on board opened fire. Cuban troops then returned fire, killing four people on that boat and injuring the other six. The Cuban government also said the captain of its vessel was injured. Cuba's interior ministry says that the men on the boats had, quote, "terrorist intent." They said they recovered assault rifles, handguns and Molotov cocktails.
MARTIN: The Cuban government, as I understand it, released a list of people that they say were on the boat. Do we know anything about them?
PERALTA: Yeah, the Cuban government says that some of these people were known to them. They were Cubans living in the U.S., and some of them had been designated as terrorists by the Cuban government. We were able to learn about one of the survivors. His name is Amijail Sanchez Gonzalez and he runs a group called Auto Defensa del Pueblo, or the People's Self-Defense Group. And I spoke to his friend Kiki Naranjo. They run the organization together, and he says that over the past few years, they've been recruiting Cubans inside the island to build a clandestine society. Essentially, he says, the point is to sabotage the Cuban government from the inside. And Naranjo says he did not know of the plans that Sanchez had, but that he would have been proud to be on that boat. None of those men, he told me, are terrorists.
KIKI NARANJO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "All of them are men who want Cuba to be free," he says, "but they grew tired."
NARANJO: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "They got tired of promises from presidents, they got tired of promises from Congress."
And I pressed him a little bit because the Trump administration is also very much turning up the pressure on Cuba. The U.S. has enacted an oil blockade, driven the country to the brink of collapse. And I asked Naranjo if he didn't think that was enough to topple the government, and he replied, the only thing the Cuban government understands is bullets.
MARTIN: So what could be the fallout of this incident, which I think many people realize is taking place against a background of some tense moments already between the U.S. and Cuba?
PERALTA: Yeah. I mean, look, the first thing everyone thought when they heard this news was Brothers to the Rescue. And 30 years ago this week, the Cuban government shot down the plane of a U.S. organization that helped rescue Cuban migrants out at sea. Four people were killed, and the U.S. Congress reacted by codifying the embargo against Cuba. Those sanctions are still in place today. Yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, we're not jumping to conclusions. We're going to investigate. And I spoke to Michael Bustamante, who studies Cuba at the University of Miami, and he says this will no doubt inflame tensions in South Florida, but he was surprised by how measured Rubio's comments were.
MICHAEL BUSTAMANTE: I think the Trump administration seems torn between actually wanting to escalate things with Cuba beyond a point, but then also fearing the consequences.
PERALTA: And those consequences, he said, could be mass migration or regime change triggering a U.S. military intervention, which he doesn't think Trump wants.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Eyder Peralta reporting from Mexico City. Eyder, thank you.
PERALTA: Thank you, Michel.
Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
