A Cuban former political prisoner once honoured by the US State Department for her opposition to Fidel Castro’s communist regime was the “mastermind” behind the failed plot to topple his successors, authorities in Havana alleged.
Maritza Lugo Fernández, a mother of two who was detained or imprisoned in Cuba 30 times before fleeing to Florida in 2002, was said to have led the logistics and financing of the ten-man mission, in which four were killed and six detained in a shootout at sea with border guards.
Lugo Fernández, 62, called them “the ten most virtuous people in the world”.
“There is no greater act of love and sacrifice than the one who gives his life for his brothers and the homeland,” she stated on social media, sharing a photograph of herself with some of them making “L” signs to signal libertad — freedom.
“Down with the murderous Castro-Canel communism. Fire to the dictatorship,” she stated, using a joint term for the former and current presidents, Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel. She did not respond to enquiries about her alleged role.
Maritza Lugo Fernández with Amijail Sánchez González, bottom left and Leordán Cruz Gómez, right
Officials from Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior displayed the equipment they said was seized from the group’s boat, which was intercepted by a coastal patrol off Cuba’s northern coast early last Wednesday.
The haul included a dozen high-powered rifles, 12,800 rounds of ammunition, pistols, sniper vests, a generator, Starlink satellite kits, a drone, scopes, radios, combat knives, helmets, camouflage gear and bolt cutters.
Radios were among the hoard of equipment seized by a coastal patrol…
AFP/GETTY IMAGES
… along with guns
AP/RAMON ESPINOSA
“It was an incalculable imbalance of force,” said First Colonel Ybey Carballo Pérez of the Cuban Border Guard. “If we had not reacted the way we did, the ones who would have died would have been on the Cuban side.”
The US State Department said it would investigate but has not countered Cuba’s account.
Relatives and friends of the ten rejected the regime’s description of them as “terrorists”, calling them heroes and freedom fighters who wanted to help Cubans rise up against tyranny. Some had warned it would be a “suicide mission” and thought they had abandoned the idea.
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“I had heard something about a year ago but I never believed they were going to do it … I said ‘You guys are crazy, it’s not a good moment for this,’” said Armando Labrador, head of Cuba Primero, a Miami-based group pursuing non-violent advocacy.
“I don’t want to talk bad about them — at the end of the day they are very brave — but the real truth is that what they did was wrong.”
Lugo Fernández rose to prominence within Cuba’s dissident movement during the presidency of Fidel Castro, who seized power in 1959 after overthrowing the government of Fulgencio Batista. Castro stepped down in 2008 and died in 2016.
Fidel Castro with Nikita Khrushchev in 1963
AP
She was detained repeatedly for speaking out against the dictatorship, organising protests and promoting freedom of expression and democracy, spending time in “punishment cells” measuring just one metre wide that drove others to suicide.
“When I was in pre-university and I saw how the regime beat my classmates at school just because they wanted to leave Cuba, because they wanted to emigrate, I said, ‘This can’t be.’ From that moment on I began to confront the regime,” she recalled in an interview for Memory of Nations, a database of testimonies from survivors of totalitarian regimes.
“Because of my protests … I was prevented from entering university and from playing sports. From then on, my life became a real problem.”
In 1996 Lugo Fernández was arrested by state security agents for “attempting to harm the nation’s economy” after they found a letter she had written to President Clinton commending the Helms-Burton Act, legislation he enacted to formalise US trade and economic sanctions against Cuba.
Two years later she defied a house-arrest order and slipped out to attend a historic Mass led by Pope John Paul II, the first pontiff to visit the island. As the Pope addressed Fidel Castro in the crowd, calling on him to end political oppression and pressing the US to lift sanctions, Lugo stood wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Do not be afraid” and handed out photographs of political prisoners to foreign journalists.
In 2001 she wrote an essay entitled “I Accuse” while in Cuba’s notorious Manto Negro (black cloak) women’s prison and smuggled it out to the Florida congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart, who read it aloud in the House of Representatives.
“I accuse these miserable and cowardly men and women who, through the use of force, commit all types of human-rights violations while nothing stops them as they attempt to defend a false revolution built and maintained upon a foundation of lies and infamies,” she wrote.
“Stop the continuous wanton detention of innocent people whose only crime is disagreeing with the Castro regime … As a physically defenceless woman in ill health, as a mother of two unfortunate daughters currently without a mother’s care and armed with my religious faith as my only weapon, I accuse.”
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Her husband Rafael Ibarra Roque was president of the Frank País 30th of November party, a Cuban pro-democracy group. He was arrested in 1994 and imprisoned for more than 17 years, accused of “sabotage” because he had sent reports abroad of the human-rights crackdown.
Lugo Fernández was one of four female political ex-prisoners honoured by the Cuban American Bar Association at a ceremony in Miami in 2024. Each was presented with a letter from the then US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, commending their courage.
On Saturday Mike Hammer, the US chargé d’affaires in Havana, promised that an end was in sight to 67 years of repression. “I see it coming,” he said.
Speaking at a Cuban American Bar Association gala in Miami, Florida, he added: “This administration is determined to make the dream of the Cuban people to live in freedom come true … Cuba is a priority for the ‘America first’ foreign-relations agenda.”
Marco Rubio speaks on the speedboat incident last week
In Miami’s Little Havana, Cuban-Americans called for Cuba to be next in line for regime change, following US actions in Iran and Venezuela.
The Trump administration’s squeeze on Cuba has so far focused on economic and diplomatic routes. Back-channel talks between US and Cuban officials have included Raúl Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, 41, the grandson of the de facto leader Raúl Castro, 94.
Hammer has met Cubans who he says were warned by authorities: “If you meet with Hammer we’re going to interrogate you, we’re going to arrest you.”
He said that people had been defying the threats, telling him: “Upload this meeting to social media, take pictures of us, tell the world that we are suffering, what we are experiencing — and tell the world that the Cuban people want to live in freedom, in peace and with the opportunity to prosper.”
He added: “People are expressing hope not that change can happen but that change will happen. That’s what we’re working on … in 2026, Cuba will be free.”
Last month Hammer also visited Spain and the Vatican to rally support for regime change in Cuba.
President Trump suggested last week that he might pursue a “friendly takeover” of the island. But on Sunday Lindsey Graham, the US senator for South Carolina, also suggested that it might not be so friendly. “Cuba is next. They’re gonna fall. This communist dictatorship in Cuba; its days are numbered.”
Labrador said: “I believe Raul’s grandson is going to have some involvement in a new government … We want a free and fair election within 18 months to two years and the way we get there isn’t important, as long as we get there. He realises something needs to happen.”
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