Raul Castro Indicted | Is Cuba the Next Venezuela?
5/29/202610 min
On May 20th, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a federal indictment charging former Cuban head of state Raul Castro with the murder of American civilians. That same day, the USS Nimitz carrier strike group entered the Caribbean. We break down the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, the GAESA military conglomerate controlling Cuba's economy, and what the Venezuela playbook tells us about where this is headed.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsJohn Waters· Host0:00
Things seem to be heating up in the Caribbean yet again. On May 20th, 2026, the US Department of Justice unsealed a federal grand jury indictment at the Freedom Tower in Miami. In that indictment, they charged former head of state, Raul Castro, with the murder of American civilians. That same day, the USS Nimitz carrier strike group entered into the Caribbean Sea, and they did it with quite some fanfare and announcements from the US government. Now, I am not a Navy person, but it does seem rather non-standard to have a carrier strike group enter the Caribbean unless it's doing sea trials, a workup for a possible deployment, et cetera. It's just not somewhere we usually send our carrier strike groups. I could be mistaken there. But the next day, ICE arrested a woman in Miami, and the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, he personally revoked her green card. All three coordinated on Cuba's Independence Day. This is a playbook, and we have now, I think, seen it play out before. So first, let's jump back to February 24th, 1996, 'cause you have to understand what the crime is before understanding what the charge is, or at least that's the way I operate. Now, there was an organization out of Miami called the Brothers to Rescue Cuban Exiles. It was a volunteer flying small Cessnas over the Florida Straits, looking for rafters, people on inner tubes, makeshift boats, trying to get out of Cuba. The Brothers to Rescue would spot them and call them in to the Coast Guard. No weapons, no military affiliation. It was just humanitarian surveillance, more or less. Now, on that February morning, three of those Cessna 337s departed Opa-locka Airport and headed for the Straits. And then