Cubans are asking who their neighbors are as they digest the news that the US has brought criminal charges against Cuba’s 94-year-old former president, Raúl Castro. For the first time, US military strikes on the island are being considered a serious possibility.

Anger in Havana Over US Threats

There is anger at Washington from a population that had previously lost its faith in its own government. “How dare they?” said a teacher in Havana, who was considering attending a march against the indictment on Friday morning. “I’d never normally go to something like that, but it’s despicable. Who are they to threaten us in such a way?”

The incident core to the US indictment of Castro involves the shooting down of two unarmed Cessna planes by Cuban fighter jets in 1996. Four people died in the incident, which was seen at the time as an atrocity and a terrible strategic error.

Historical Context and Diplomatic Tensions

What is less remembered is that it wasn’t a surprise. Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, a first rebel leader to enter Havana under Fidel Castro but by then living in exile, told a reporter: “Everybody here knew something was going to happen to the planes.”

Brothers to the Rescue, a group founded by Bay of Pigs veteran José Basulto, originally aimed to spot Cuban refugees trying to reach the United States. By the mid-90s, it had turned to provocation by buzzing Cuba and dropping leaflets. According to the book Back Channel to Cuba by William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, Fidel Castro himself said the US would never tolerate such actions over its own capital.

Their most provocative act in 1995 came on July 13, when Basulto’s Cessna Skymaster buzzed Havana, raining down thousands of religious medallions and leaflets reading “Brothers, Not Comrades.” Despite pleas from the Cuban government, the US continued to tolerate the flights. Eventually, the Cuban leadership snapped. “Fidel was trying to find a diplomatic solution, he had sent several messages to Bill Clinton saying, ‘You have to stop this, we cannot stand it,’” said Carlos Alzugaray, who was Cuba’s ambassador to Brussels at the time.

Current Pressures and US Indictment

The pressure the Cuban government is facing now is greater than it was in the past. The recent indictment followed weeks in which surveillance aircraft have circled the island, suspect intelligence reports have suggested that Cuba has drones and poses a threat to the US, the CIA director landed in Havana to tell Cuban officials to stop cozying up to Russia and China, and the aircraft carrier group Nimitz entered the Caribbean.

In a speech directed to the Cuban people, Marco Rubio, the Cuban American US secretary of state, said: “You, who call the island your home, are going through unimaginable hardships. Today I want to tell you what we, in the US, are offering to help you not only alleviate the current crisis, but also to build a better future.” He blamed the Cuban government for the 22-hour blackouts Cubans are enduring, despite the four-month US oil blockade and nearly 70-year embargo.

Rubio also addressed Cuban concerns about the proportion of the economy controlled by the Cuban military. “They buy fuel for their generators and their vehicles while the people are asked to sacrifice,” he said. It was widely seen in Cuba as a clever and well-informed speech. Recently, Rubio had offered Cuba $100m in aid, which on Thursday he said had been accepted, but he did not confirm whether Washington would agree to Havana’s terms.

Alongside such efforts to make Cuba dependent, US sanctions have been effective in driving out non-US businesses operating in Cuba. On Thursday, World2Fly, a Spanish charter airline, joined the many others that have stopped flying to the island.

Donald Trump has repeatedly made clear he wants to “free” Cuba for his Cuban American friends in Miami. Concerns that this will involve creating an American protectorate were not helped by a Bloomberg report on Wednesday that revealed the Canadian nickel miner Sherritt, a major force in the Cuban economy, is in talks with Ray Washburne, a former Trump adviser, to hand over a controlling stake.

“I think this is a pretty good introductory course to the sort of barefaced corruption that would accompany any sort of US control over Cuba,” said a European businessman who works in Cuba. It was such overweening US control that originally led to the Cuban revolution.

Perhaps the most inevitable part of the story is that one of the Cuban MiG pilots alleged to be involved in shooting down the planes arrived in the US in 2024 as part of a wave of immigration that has seen Cuba lose 20% of its population since 2021. Luis González-Pardo Rodríguez, already facing charges of immigration fraud, was indicted on Wednesday alongside Raúl Castro.

“The indictments should have happened—not in the US, but in a post-Castro Cuba. All these crimes—including many we don’t know about—will come out and it should be for the Cuban people to decide whether there are trials or a process of reconciliation and forgiveness,” said Manuel Barcia, a Cuban who is now pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Bath.

Whether the US will now try to abduct Castro, as it did Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, remains to be seen. “How far do they want to go with this?” asked the former ambassador Carlos Alzugaray. “Are they really going to come in and abduct a 94-year-old guy?”