For decades, Cuba had an omnipotent, infallible intelligence, capable of anticipating everything and supporting allied regimes against any external pressure. In Venezuela they were not partners: they were tutors, custodians and owners of the real threads of power. But that supposed revolutionary brotherhood cracked years ago. According to confidential documents extracted during the attack in Caracas by Delta Force commandos from Nicolás Maduro‘s bunker, the death of Hugo Chávez would have been an assassination ordered by Fidel Castro, and explains in detail the reasons for this Cuban operation.
Now, almost thirteen years later, the break between Venezuela and Cuba has become definitive. Caracas blames Cuban agents for not warning them of US intervention. On January 3, Cuban intelligence stopped being all-powerful and even less reliable.
The United States military intervention in Venezuela was not only the end of Chavismo as a regional project, but also the most compelling proof that Cuban intelligence no longer had a real capacity for protection, deterrence or control. It didn’t fail by surprise. It failed because the system was exhausted, infiltrated and overtaken from within. Caracas blames Cuban intelligence, but mistrust began when Hugo Chávez became ill, and increased when he died. Havana has always intimidated the Chavistas. They know his darkest secrets. But now that the United States is the new “administrator” that information is irrelevant.
Venezuela is not only broken socially and economically: it is politically distrustful of who for years was its silent guardian. Cuba stopped being the strategic ally and became an uncomfortable partner, observed with suspicion within Chavismo itself. The relationship, built on control, intelligence and dependence, today is cracking because Caracas is beginning to wonder if Havana was ever a partner or was it always a jailer, and possibly even the murderers of its leader Hugo Chávez.
Did Cuba eliminate Chávez?
The members of the United States Delta Force, supported by information from the CIA, not only extracted Nicolas Maduro and his wife, but also bags of documents and hard drives. A senior source who participated as an analyst in the operation, and had access to the reports, commented that one of those files caught his attention: the version of the illness and subsequent death of Hugo Chávez would not have been a biological coincidence, but rather a Cuban intelligence operation in which Fidel Castro would have ordered the death of the former Venezuelan president, and the reasons are even more striking.
According to the documents, Fidel Castro would have learned that, while he was facing serious health problems, Chávez was exploring the idea of being the one to replace the Cuban leadership in the regional revolution. Hugo Chávez shared his idea with a group of Cuban generals, that he would lead Cuba from Venezuela and the generals in Havana would be his ministers. Something similar to what Donald Trump announced now about wanting to be the CEO of Venezuela.
The documents show the versions of the Cuban high command, particularly intelligence generals who never accepted Chávez’s idea and much less lost control over Venezuela, their main strategic asset in Latin America.
Those generals would have warned Fidel Castro that Chávez was no longer trustworthy. From there—according to the confidential documents—the relationship froze, support became surveillance and, suddenly, Chávez became ill. Castro offered to transfer him to Havana to give him “better care and security” where he became even weaker. A year and nine months have passed since his illness was detected and he died. The Venezuelan leader’s plan had been dismantled and the threat eliminated by Fidel Castro, who died almost three years after Chávez.
After the death of Hugo Chávez, a disturbing conviction began to take hold in circles of power: that for Fidel Castro the true plan was not only to survive Chávez, but to replace him with someone much more manageable. In that logic, Nicolás Maduro appeared as the perfect piece. Without his own charisma, without real military leadership and without an organic base comparable to that of Chávez, Maduro represented the golden opportunity for Havana to go from influence to total subordination of Venezuela. A weak, dependent and isolated president was more useful than a popular commander with his own agenda.
The difference was immediately noticeable in the safety rings. Chávez never allowed such invasive foreign custody nor such a profound Cuban presence in his intimate environment. Chávez had Cuban escorts, since after the coup against him in 2002, he no longer trusted some generals. But never as many as in the Maduro administration, who was quickly surrounded by Cuban advisors, bodyguards and operators, displacing Venezuelan cadres and shielding power from Havana. It was not about protecting the president, but about controlling him. Thus, Venezuela stopped being a strategic ally to become an administered territory, where priorities were no longer decided in Caracas, but based on the interests of Cuba and its political elite.
There is no political autopsy that will close this case, but the damage has already been done. The mere circulation of these documents and versions confirms that the Cuba-Venezuela alliance died with Chávez. Today, in Miraflores, no one believes in revolutionary brotherhood or Cuban loyalty. What was previously accepted out of fear is today commented as a warning: in the Chavista project, Cuba not only advised, it also decided, and when it felt its power was threatened, it did not hesitate to cut the thread.
At the intelligence service levels, these types of operations are not strange. In the same way, Americans suspect the CIA and Mossad of being behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Venezuela blames Cuba for not having detected the attack on Caracas in time. Cuban agents confused accumulation of data with strategic influence. Having information is not the same as being able to use it. And in this scenario, using it would have been useless and suicidal. Any attempt at pressure would have unified the US security apparatus and accelerated the intervention. Havana knew it. That’s why he chose not to act.
That silence was not cunning or fine calculation. It was recognition of helplessness. When the political decision has already been made, the files do not stop helicopters or special operations. Cuban intelligence was reduced to a dead file in the face of a power that had already defined the outcome.
The fall of Venezuela was rapid because it was fragmented, negotiated and infiltrated from within. High figures of Chavismo began to collaborate long before the final collapse. Not out of democratic conviction, but out of survival instinct and money. Cuba couldn’t help it because it no longer controlled anyone.
Cuban intelligence continued to operate as if the Cold War had not ended. He believed that fear, surveillance and ideological loyalty were enough to protect a regime. He did not understand that the new power is driven by actionable information, fast times and internal betrayals.
When the regional board was redefined, Cuba no longer had strong allies or the ability to escalate. His intelligence knew a lot, but he could no longer do anything with that knowledge. And when intelligence cannot act, it ceases to be intelligence and becomes memory.
The United States did not need to neutralize Cuba directly. He just waited. The internal collapse of Chavismo did the job. Cuban intelligence observed, understood what was happening, but no longer had the tools to intervene.
For days, The New York Times y The Washington Post They had clear indications that something bigger was brewing against Venezuela. They didn’t publish it. Not because of censorship, nor because of political alignment, but for a simple reason: not to risk the lives of American soldiers in an ongoing operation. This silence contrasts with the blindness—or irresponsibility—of Cuban intelligence. Either they did not know how to read the signals that civil newsrooms did detect thousands of kilometers away, or they read them and chose to ignore them. Both options are equally serious.
If they did not know, it confirms the structural defeat of their intelligence apparatus. If they knew and did not act, then they agreed to sacrifice their own soldiers so as not to become the direct target of the attack.
While the major American media decided to remain silent to protect lives, the services that were supposed to anticipate, evacuate or neutralize the threat did nothing visible. The question that remains floating is uncomfortable: was Cuban intelligence surpassed… or did it choose not to see so as not to pay the political cost of admitting that the attack was inevitable? In either scenario, the result is the same: lives lost, power evaporated, and a region that discovers too late that those who claimed to protect it no longer had control of anything.
Cuba ended when it was no longer credible to its own allies. And when that happens, there is no discourse to support it. Cuban intelligence did not lose an ally: it lost its place in the history of regional power.
After the attack, the Cuban agents began to flee Caracas. Some heading to Mexico and others to Panama. Colombia, it is not an option. Petro can shield them only until August. In the Panamanian case, the Cuban spies have protection from the government, which claims to be anti-Chavista, but under the table, President José Raúl Mulino, operates and does business with the Panamanian Carretero Napolitano family, construction businessmen in Venezuela and Cuba and associates of Nicolas Maduro and the Castro family. The Carretero Napolitanos were sanctioned a few weeks ago by the United States for corruption. The current Panamanian president even uses the same private plane that the Castros travel on and that Maduro used.
For years Cuba and Venezuela have had a strong presence of intelligence services in Panama. Its capital is like the movie “White House”, a swarm of spies from all over the world exchanging information. The Cuban agents leaving Venezuela remind us of the last scene and the famous dialogue between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, “if that plane takes off and you don’t go with it, you will regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon… and for the rest of your life.”
