A federal court in Florida indicted former Cuban president Raúl Castro in May on charges stemming from the 1996 downing of two civilian aircraft piloted by US nationals. The indictment alleges conspiracy to kill US nationals, destruction of aircraft, and murder. Castro was Cuba's defense minister at the time, and Cuban armed forces carried out the attacks.
The timing sent a clear signal. Just months earlier, the Trump administration had bombed Caracas and removed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, backed by a separate federal indictment from New York. Cuba's indictment appeared next on a predictable list. The open question now is what comes next: a bombing and extraction operation like Venezuela's, a full-scale invasion of the island, or merely the threat of force to extract concessions from the Trump administration.
The deeper problem is that this indictment sits within a centuries-old legal tradition that transforms US military aggression into lawful action. The pattern began early. In the 18th and 19th centuries, American leaders justified repeated cycles of invasion, occupation, and annexation across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. According to the Congressional Research Service's official list of US military interventions abroad, the US has invaded Cuba at least 10 times, including landings in the 1820s to suppress alleged "piracy" and multiyear occupations in 1906 and 1917 to protect "US interests."
Those old precedents remain alive in modern legal arguments. Last September, Trump administration forces began deadly "boat strikes" against suspected drug traffickers, killing nearly 200 people outside US territory. In October, prominent Republicans explicitly invoked Thomas Jefferson's actions against the "Barbary pirates" to justify these operations. A Justice Department memo in December recycled the same logic.
Another tactic with 19th-century roots involved unilaterally accusing foreign actors of legal violations, demanding payment as indemnity, then attacking when payment never arrived. An 1854 incident in Greytown, Nicaragua, exemplifies the pattern. A US steamboat captain murdered a local resident. When the Nicaraguan town tried to arrest him, the US diplomat demanded immunity for the captain and wrote to Washington claiming an "insult." A US warship soon arrived demanding a massive indemnity. When payment was refused, the warship leveled the entire town.
A Supreme Court case decided in 1860, Durand v Hollins, declared all of this perfectly legal, offering sweeping immunity for accusations of wrongdoing. Significantly, 21st-century Justice Department memos still cite this case to justify foreign military intervention.
The Castro indictment fits this same tradition. It provides legal cover for whatever violent action follows. The underlying legal system offers impunity for state violence while furnishing endless pretexts to accuse foreign actors of wrongdoing. Cuban civilians, already suffering from US sanctions and embargoes that created a humanitarian crisis by cutting off food, medicine, and fuel, will bear the cost if any military action proceeds.
The events around the 1996 plane attacks were more complicated than the indictment suggests. The National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research group, published a report using declassified documents showing that the US nationals flying those aircraft were intentionally provoking a confrontation with Cuba by repeatedly violating Cuban airspace. Both US and Cuban governments had warned the pilots to stop. This context does not appear in the indictment.
The fundamental issue transcends the Trump administration. Even if Trump faced legal constraints, the imperial legal system would remain intact, offering impunity for violence that inevitably harms civilians. Meaningful change requires a legal system that prioritizes human rights over imperial prerogatives, not merely different leaders working within the same framework.
Author James Rodriguez: "This indictment is a pretext dressed in legal language, and it signals more suffering for Cubans already crushed by sanctions."
Comments