Cuba fuelled George Floyd riots, claims Trump administration
BLM leaders controversially blamed Washington for the anti-government protests violently quashed in Cuba.
The movement faced a backlash from Cuban dissidents when it praised the regime for its “solidarity with oppressed peoples of African descent” and demanded the US government lift its longstanding embargo on Cuba.
“This cruel and inhumane policy, instituted with the explicit intention of destabilising the country and undermining Cubans’ right to choose their own government is at the heart of Cuba’s current crisis,” it claimed at the time.
The publication of the state department report has stirred speculation that Donald Trump’s administration is trying to establish a pretext for overthrowing Cuba’s communist government.
Mr Trump previously claimed that Cuba had “sort of collapsed” and signalled he would turn his attention to it after the war with Iran.
The report also says that Left-wing activists linked to Cuban intelligence have developed a plan for protests outside US military bases and immigration facilities in the event of a US invasion.
The National Network on Cuba (NNOC) is alleged in the report to coordinate with the Cuban regime and act as a ‘fifth column’. The coalition’s member groups include the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose members include several prominent Democrats such as Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York.
The NNOC is said to have distributed a plan for “coordinated nationwide actions” within 24 hours of US military action against Cuba to “make it politically and materially costly for the US government to wage war”.
Left-wing US students targeted
The DSA itself is not controlled by Cuban agents, the report says, but has a “deep and abiding devotion” to the regime, to which it began sending official delegations in 2022.
Citing US intelligence analysis and the testimony of Cuban defectors, the report claims US universities are “one of the premier targets of Cuba’s subversive activities”.
They are said to provide “fertile ground for recruiting ideologically sympathetic young Americans who will ascend to positions of influence, power, and access”.
A former Cuban agent is said to have revealed that the regime’s “intelligence operation seeks to identify politically engaged Leftist students at elite US universities” who will later take prominent positions in government and the private sector.