Several of Cuba’s latest “terrorists” live in Miami.
Luis Zuniga, a former diplomat and political prisoner of the Castro regime, is one of 61 people listed as a “terrorist” by Cuba and accused of promoting, planning, organizing, financing, or supporting actions against the Cuban communist party.
The list was given to Interpol and government officials from different nations, including the United States in December 2023.
“I think the overt and covert campaign of threats and intimidation by the Cuban dictatorship against U.S. citizens of Cuban descent is very important,” Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat told The Epoch Times. He is an author and cofounder of and spokesperson for the Cuban Democratic Directorate.
Mr. Boronot’s outspoken resistance to Cuba’s communist regime landed him a spot on the so-called terrorist list. He has been accused of trying to destabilize the Cuban government, along with threats of violence on more than one occasion.
“I think being included in that list ... is definitely a threat.”
Some believe Cuba’s “terrorist” list and the newest round of menace toward exiles was launched because the Cuban government is on increasingly shaky ground at home.
Now, Cuban Americans in Miami are fearful as Castro devotees launch a new wave of threats and their homes are targeted.
Ramon Saul Sanchez is number 29 on the list. He said he’s been struggling for the freedom of Cuba for more than 40 years and asserts the terrorist labeling is just another communist party tactic to manipulate the narrative.
“They like to use those labels. In Cuba, if you’re not pro-Castro, you’re a worm. You’re a counter-revolutionary,” he told The Epoch Times. ”I’ve never been convicted of terrorism or even charged.”
Activist and journalist Ninoska Perez wasn’t at all surprised to find her name on the list.
“I’ve always had the threats. They don’t like everyone to announce what they do wrong and their crimes,” Ms. Perez told The Epoch Times.
Guerrero Cubano
Today, Ms. Perez works for a Miami radio station and has recently had a member of her family in the city surveilled at home by suspected members of the Cuban regime.
“It’s not only that they put you on a terrorist list, but they make public your home address.”
In March, the YouTube channel “Guerrero Cubano,” which translates to Cuban Warrior, posted a video that contained photos and addresses of the homes of exiles whose names appear on the “terrorist” list. Ms. Perez’s cousin lives in one of the homes.
She said it’s one thing to come after her since, as she put it, “I understand that what I do upsets a powerful dictatorship. I’m not complaining about that.”
Coming after her family, however, is much worse.
“It’s even worse because they’re subjecting her to this,” Ms. Perez said, adding that her cousin mentioned a couple of times that she’s seen strange cars parked near her house that don’t belong to any of the neighbors.
Compounding this, she feels there’s little that can be done to stop the threats. “What’s the police going to do? Patrol your house 24 hours? They simply can’t do that.”
In the Guerrero Cubano video, the narrator claims the Miami police have to be guarding homes now because people are scared. The same male narrator further states he will continue sharing information on the homes of Cuban exiles being targeted by the communist regime. He also claimed to know where the list members eat and what medications they take. The narrator even went as far as threatening to visit targeted exiles in the hospital.
The Miami Police Department didn’t respond to an Epoch Times request for comment on the recent threats against Cuban exiles.
“It’s scary for anybody,” Ms. Perez said.
It’s a vicious cycle that Cuban Americans know all too well. Threats and attacks from communist agents have come in waves over the decades.
She recalled a time in the 1990s when the Castro regime sent an assassin to Miami to kill a member of the Cuban American National Foundation. The target was afforded several days of police protection and the assassin failed. But, Ms. Perez said, the police can’t be everywhere all the time. If they intercept or deter one communist assassin or agitator, the Cuban regime can just send another.
Ms. Perez said that in the past several decades, the most notable lull in harassment or threats of attack from Cuba’s communist party was during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, from 1989 to 1993.
The U.S. State Department said it’s “aware of the list released by the Cuban government.”
“These most recent allegations are the newest iteration of Cuban authorities’ efforts to belittle emigrants exercising their freedom of expression, including their freedom to criticize Cuba’s abysmal human rights record and relentless repression,” a department spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
“Allegations that the United States is encouraging violent actions against the Cuban government are absurd.”
Political Prisoner
Some Cuban Americans say if you’re lucky enough to survive what the regime does to you on the island, everything else is just details.Mr. Zuniga didn’t seem overly concerned about being on the list. But, then again, he was a political prisoner who survived torture and several prison breaks before getting out.
Back when he was a young man in college in Cuba, Mr. Zuniga became a threat to the communist party simply by refusing to join them.
“At the time I was about to graduate, they [government] said that students that have access to university studies should join communist organizations,” he told The Epoch Times. “I refused to join them.”
He was promptly expelled from the engineering school and told he'd pay “grave consequences” for refusing to join the party.
“I was told I had to be a communist to be a professional in Cuba,” he said.
A few days after the incident at his university, Mr. Zuniga was tipped off that he was about to be arrested for his resistance. He barely had time to flee before the police arrived and interrogated his family to find out where he was hiding.
He was soon caught trying to leave the island and was imprisoned for two years.
Thus began a series of prison breaks and recaptures that went on for a total of 19 years.
Mr. Zuniga said it’s important to know that in most countries, the government torture stops once you’ve been sent to prison. However, in Cuba, that’s when the torture truly starts.
“For the people who dared to fight against them [communist party], they must be destroyed,” he said.
Some of the torture methods used by the regime include the starvation of prisoners and denying their families any visitation rights. He said the government tries to erase you from the memory of your family by making it impossible to see you. Prisoners are transferred around a lot, making it difficult to know where a loved one may be incarcerated at any given moment.
Sadly, Mr. Zuniga said his story is a textbook example from the archives of Cuba’s nightmare detention facilities. “My story is no different from any other one. It’s a common story in prison; they try to destroy you.”
On his second jail break, Mr. Zuniga had help from a fellow political prisoner whom he invited to escape with him through Guantanamo Bay. After navigating minefields, guard dogs, and armed soldiers, he managed to break into the infamous U.S. naval facility and detention center to escape Castro’s regime. Though successful in his escape, Mr. Zuniga was recaptured again by communist agents upon returning to try and help others escape.
He said he was only released from communist custody after the 1980s United Natio’s investigation of Cuba’s prison system, after which, Castro’s administration chose to deport him from the island for good. Since then, Mr. Zuniga has continued to receive threats from the communist party.
“In 2002, a guy came to my office and said, ‘Be careful, the Cuban regime wants to kill you.’ I asked how he knew and he said, ‘Because I’m a Cuban communist agent,'” Mr. Zuniga said.
The self-proclaimed agent told him that he knew everything about Mr. Zuniga because he'd been investigating him, including the kind of car he drove and what his house looked like.
“I immediately called the FBI. They were able to locate the guy, and later they told me it was true and he was part of a ring,” Mr. Zuniga said.
Being threatened by the communist party is the price he’s paying for going against the regime, he said. When asked what he thought about the “terrorist” list, he brushed it off.
“I know some of the people on that list, of course, but there are no terrorists here,” he said.
Mr. Sanchez noted that labeling propaganda has always been a useful way to stigmatize and exclude those who’ve spoken out against the Cuban regime.
It also makes traveling more complicated. “We have to be very careful when traveling abroad,” Mr. Sanchez said.
Desperation Tactics
With the newest wave of protests rocking the island nation, Cuban officials are finding it harder to sell the lie that everything bad happening is somehow the United States’ fault, according to Ms. Perez.After the massive March 17 demonstration in Santiago—the nation’s second-largest city—she spoke with a woman who took part in the demonstration who said the communist government was “so scared, they opened the food stores in the middle of the night so people could buy food,” she said.
The woman said, “If there was always food, why did they let us starve?”
Ms. Perez said even staples such as milk gets cut off when children turn 7. Older children get what’s called a “nutritious serum,” which is a brown sugar syrup.
Before Castro took over, Mr. Zuniga said “Cuba was one of the richest countries in Latin America.” Despite being a small island, pre-communist Cuba was the world’s premier sugar exporter. The country also exported tobacco, beef, and shoes to Italy.
“Wages were higher than in Spain and Italy,” Mr. Zuniga said.
In sharp contrast, Cuba presently imports 80 percent of all its food while the population struggles with ongoing shortages of basic supplies, and millions have fled communist rule.
“You can tell that they’re worried. They’re always blaming the [U.S.] embargo, but the people don’t believe that anymore,” Ms. Perez said.
“The Cuban people still see that new hotels are being built and luxury cars are driving in the streets, so people aren’t believing it’s the embargo.”
