A Survivor Contradicts the Official Cuban Gov. Account…
…of how the US abduction of Maduro occurred
Colonel Pedro Yadin reveals that the Cuban officers were sleeping when they were attacked with “bombs and drones”.
HAVANA TIMES – The Cuban government once again deployed its political liturgy this Friday in Havana over the death of the 32 Cubans killed in Caracas during the capture of Nicolas Maduro. At the Anti-Imperialist Tribune, facing the Malecón, the ceremony functioned as a platform for ideological reaffirmation and political warning, at a moment of evident internal fragility for the regime.
From the podium, President Miguel Díaz-Canel, insisted that there would be no negotiation with the United States “on the basis of coercion.” Cuba, he said, was willing to engage in dialogue, but only “on equal terms and based on mutual respect.” The speech, quoted in fragments by the official press, leaned on a rhetoric of epic resistance, threats of external aggression, and calls for unity.
According to the president, the January 3 operation inaugurated “a new era of barbarism, plunder, and neo-fascism,” and struck the Cuban government hard, which lived through “very bitter hours” of “indignation and helplessness.” Venezuela, Havana’s main political ally and commercial partner for more than two decades, once again occupied the symbolic center of the official narrative, now under the figure of sacrifice.
However, the martial tone of the ceremony contrasted abruptly with one of the most cited testimonies by the regime’s own press. It is that of Colonel Pedro Yadín Domínguez, one of the survivors. His account, published in Granma and broadcast in a television interview, introduces fissures that are difficult to reconcile with the heroic version the regime is trying to impose.
“We were sleeping, resting in the early morning,” the colonel declared before the cameras. “We barely had weapons,” he added, explaining that the group was providing support to the Venezuelan president’s security detail and was not in a combat posture. The attack, he stated, was “disproportionate,” carried out with planes, bombs, drones, and Apache helicopters, against a group that was neither on alert nor armed to resist.
The assertion is uncomfortable for a narrative that insists that the 32 Cubans “fought back” and died in combat, as stated in the first official communiqué announcing their deaths, through which national mourning was decreed. The image of heroic battle dissolves when the speaker is a high-ranking officer of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, seated in a wheelchair, describing an early-morning bombardment that shattered a night of rest.
While Diaz-Canel evoked the Sierra Maestra, Africa, and even Caracas as scenes of a single historic epic, the colonel’s testimony painted another scene: that of an opaque mission, with insufficient weapons, on foreign territory, and an attack that surprised the personnel while they slept.
The propaganda machinery has tried to compensate for this void with overacting. On Mesa Redonda, official commentator Oliver Zamora raised the tone to boastful levels. He claimed that the United States “had to kill” the 32 Cubans with a “tremendous” display of brute force and that it even took them hours to achieve it. For Zamora, the event demonstrated Washington’s inability to “understand” a country like Cuba, hardened by decades of confrontation.
While the propagandist spoke of fierce resistance and of enemies incapable of subduing Cubans, the surviving colonel insisted that they were practically defenseless and without adequate weaponry. One sells epic; the other describes vulnerability.
The fracture also migrated to the online space. On YouTube, under the interview with the colonel, a user identified as @Jcontre3000 wrote: “That coward was seen in the videos of Venezuelan soldiers crying and running, that’s why he’s alive. A coward dies a thousand times and this one is a coward.” Far from being anecdotal, the comment exposes the level of polarization and distrust surrounding even official testimonies.
The profusion of images from the ceremonies has also served to expose numerous repressors. Several Cuban activists have identified among the crowd State Security agents responsible for interrogations, harassment, and episodes of direct repression. The detail is significant, because these are individuals who rarely show their faces on social media or in the official press.
Among those who have identified these officials is activist Laura Vargas, who has documented and denounced episodes of surveillance and unauthorized access to her accounts as part of the digital repression exerted against critical voices. Artist Hamlet Lavastida has also done so; he is known for his cultural and political opposition to the regime and for having been detained and sanctioned as a prisoner of conscience due to his works and public actions. In the images, former power figures fallen from grace, such as former foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque, have also been recognized.
At the ceremony, Díaz-Canel again called to “close ranks” and warned that, if attacked, Cuba would defend itself “fiercely.” “They would have to kidnap millions or wipe this archipelago off the map,” he said. But beyond the slogans, the tribute laid bare a tension the regime cannot resolve: the distance between the rhetoric of permanent war and the reality of silent, poorly explained, and deadly missions, whose details emerge only when a survivor departs from the script.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.