Nearly half a million Cubans marched through the streets of Havana to honor the 32 Cubans who were killed in combat during the US military incursion into Venezuela on January 3, 2025.
The Cuban military personnel who were in Venezuela were carrying out collaborative activities previously agreed upon with the Caracas government. The thirty Cubans killed were personally protecting Nicolás Maduro before he was kidnapped by the US military and brought to the United States, where he is currently on trial.
In Cuba, the revolutionary government has given the remains of the 32 Cubans killed every possible honor. Several days of national mourning were declared on the Caribbean island, in addition to official tours in which the fallen were carried through the streets of Cuba before being laid to rest with all the country’s military tributes.
The large demonstration was led by Cuba’s highest authorities, including members of the government, representatives of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), senior officers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and various social and political organizations that accompanied the victims’ families in their grief.
Patriotic slogans marked the voice of the crowd that rejected the murder of their compatriots: “Down with imperialism,” “Cuba yes, Yankees no,” and “Justice for the fallen” were some of the cries heard in the streets of the Cuban capital.
Yudelkis Ortiz, one of the top representatives of the PCC, said in her speech in the Plaza de la Revolución: “These heroes have raised the name of Cuba to the heights of the firmament. To die for the freedom of a brother people is the highest form of living … Our heroes knew, as every Cuban knows in the depths of their conscience, that on this island we are not born to live on our knees, but to die standing up if necessary, defending justice.”
Díaz-Canel warns that they will not surrender
For his part, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel told hundreds of thousands of students, workers, scientists, and artists: “On January 3, 2026, in the darkest hour of the early morning, while its noble people slept, Venezuela was attacked in its entirety on the orders of US President Donald Trump. Once again, now in his homeland, Bolívar’s visionary statement that ‘the United States seems destined by providence to plague America with misery in the name of freedom’ was confirmed. And Ernesto Che Guevara’s warning that ‘imperialism cannot be trusted even a little bit, not at all’.”
On the death of the 32 Cuban soldiers, the Cuban president declared: “The sacred remains of our 32 compatriots arrived yesterday in their homeland, as eternal soldiers of the integration we owe ourselves. They are the only possible measure of the courage and character of Cubans loyal to a brotherhood forged since the time of Bolívar, exalted by Martí, and now legendary thanks to the close relationship between Fidel and Chávez, leaders of regional integration who in just a few years brought literacy, restored sight, and provided medical and educational services to millions of Venezuelans and other inhabitants of our Latin America and the Caribbean.”
He also emphasized that there was indeed combat between US forces and those stationed in Venezuela, despite attempts by much of the international media to promote the idea that there was no confrontation: “No matter how much they insist on glorifying their soldiers camouflaged with helmets and bulletproof vests, night vision goggles, overprotected by planes, helicopters, and swarms of drones amid intentional blackouts, the Delta terrorists’ assault was not the walk in the park they have sold to the world.”
“One day, we will know the whole truth, but even Trump has been unable to deny that several attackers were wounded. Our brave fighters, with conventional weapons and no vests other than their morale and loyalty to the mission they were carrying out, fought to the death and beat their adversaries,” said the first secretary of the PCC.
Regarding Washington’s actions and a possible attack on Cuba, Díaz-Canel stated: “The current US administration has opened the door to an era of barbarism, dispossession, and neo-fascism, regardless of what that may mean in terms of more war, destruction, and death … They would have to kidnap millions or wipe us off the map, and even then, they would be haunted forever by the ghost of this small archipelago that they had to pulverize because they could not subdue it. No, imperialists, we are absolutely not afraid of you. And we do not like, as Fidel said, being threatened. You will not intimidate us.”
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