The crossing occurred after an attack by Rodríguez against the United States and the US secretary in X, in which he repeated the Cuban regime’s narrative on the Venezuelan conflict.
MADRID, Spain.- The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, rated publicly called Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla a “clown,” after he published a message in X in which he accused the United States Government of fabricating pretexts for an alleged military intervention in Venezuela.
Rubio responded on November 18 with a GIF of a clown with a red wig, a white face, eyebrows drawn in an arch and a wide smile with red makeup, a reaction to completely discredit the Cuban official’s allegation.
In your publication, Rodríguez attacked the State Department and went so far as to describe the US secretary as “corrupt” and a “compulsive liar.” According to him, Washington is trying to “normalize and legitimize an aggression” against Venezuela with the help of the media and, as part of that supposed plan, it would be trying to link Nicolás Maduro with drug trafficking and terrorism. The chancellor even stated that these crimes have been promoted in the region by US agencies and by “Florida politicians who call for attacking Venezuelan territory.”
The message was part of the usual narrative of the Cuban regime, which has aligned itself unconditionally with Maduro and repeats without nuance its version of an external threat. Rubio’s reaction – without a single added word – sought to ridicule the official speech in Havana, in a gesture of frontal rejection of the chancellor’s credibility.
A clash in the midst of regional escalation
The crossing between Rodríguez and Rubio comes at a time of high tension in the Caribbean. Washington maintains sanctions on Venezuelan officials and entities to pressure for democratic change and has intensified its position in the face of accusations against the Poster of the Sunsa structure linked to high-ranking Venezuelan military commanders that could be designated as a foreign terrorist organization on November 24.
The presence in the region of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, accompanied by a combat group with warships, a nuclear submarine and F-35 aircraft, has further increased the climate of friction. The United States maintains that the deployment seeks to disrupt drug trafficking routes that operate from Venezuela. Caracas, for its part, has denounced the operation as a “direct threat” and has raised its military alert level.
In Cuba, the official version insists that everything is an “imperial” pretext to justify a military escalation, despite the serious internal crisis and the island’s role as a strategic ally of Chavismo.
