Nervy time for Havana neighbours of top officials as fears of US attack grow

Havana residents react to US criminal charges against Cuba’s 94-year-old former president, Raul Castro, with expressions of concern toward neighbors in Cuba’s government or armed forces. Some people consider joining a march against the indictment. The possibility of US military strikes on the island is treated as serious for the first time. Anger toward Washington grows among a population that had previously lost faith in its own government. The piece recalls 30 years since Cuban fighter jets shot down two unarmed Cessna planes from the exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four people. The event is described as an atrocity and a strategic error, but also as something that was not unexpected, with warnings and prior knowledge in Miami. Brothers to the Rescue is portrayed as shifting from rescue efforts to provocation, including leaflet drops over Cuba.

"If you happen to live near a senior figure in Cuba's government or armed forces, others suck their teeth in an expression of concerned sympathy. For the first time, US military strikes on the island are being considered a serious possibility. There is also 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?"

"It's now 30 years since Cuban fighter jets shot down two unarmed Cessna planes belonging to the exile group Brothers to the Rescue in international airspace just north of Havana. Four people died. At the time, it was seen not only as an atrocity, but a terrible strategic error. What is less remembered is that it wasn't a surprise. I covered the story from Miami, where Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo the first rebel leader to enter Havana under Fidel Castro but by then living in exile told me: Everybody here knew something was going to happen to the planes."

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

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