Are Cuban Special Forces Shooting at Venezuelan Protesters?

Eduardo Barreto isn’t sure if the armed guards that have been shooting at him were even Venezuelan.

Since joining his country’s protests earlier this month, the 20-year-old economics student from Valencia has been tear gassed and chased by officers on motorcycles. He has watched his friends get shot in the back as they fled, and he was marching on the same street where student and beauty queen Genesis Carmona was killed last week.

He has little love for the national guard that the government has unleashed on protesters, but if he’s going to get shot, he’d like it at least to be coming from a countryman.

“We know there are Cuban officers within our national guard,” said Barreto, repeating widespread but unconfirmed reports that president Nicolas Maduro’s government might have tapped its island neighbor for help in protecting its Bolivarian revolution. “Can you imagine Russian officers joining the US National Guard to shoot at American citizens there? That’s unacceptable.”

Barreto says he has no doubt that at least some of the officers he has come across are Cuban. Early on in the protests — before guards started shooting at him — he brought them water bottles to cool off while they watched over demonstrators.

“They were in the streets standing in the sun all day and I wanted to be friendly,” Barreto said. “One of them, when he thanked me, had a Cuban accent. I know a Cuban accent, I have uncles there.”

Venezuelan officials have neither acknowledged nor denied the accusations. But reports like Barreto's have multiplied over the last several days, also fueled by Angel Vivas, a retired Venezuelan general and government critic. The embattled former military man tweeted to over 200,000 followers that “Cuban and Venezuelan henchmen” were coming to his house after Maduro ordered his arrest, according to several reports.

VICE News reached out to both Cuban and Venezuelan officials but neither were immediately available for comment.

Instead, Maduro has called for a “peace conference” on Wednesday and said demonstrators have a right to protest peacefully. “But if you’re going to go out and burn and destroy, I won’t permit that,” he said.

In Caracas, students singing the Venezuelan national anthem took to a heavily guarded Cuban Embassy on Tuesday, to protest the involvement of Cuban troops in the repression, and to call for an end to Cuba’s longstanding influence on Venezuelan politics.

“We won’t let the Castro brothers keep controlling Venezuela,” student leader Gabriela Arellano told local reporters. “Enough with Cuban interference.”

Opposition party Voluntad Popular tweeted these photos of heavily armed Venezuelan guards protecting the Cuban embassy on Tuesday.

Este fue el recibimiento en la embajada cubana. Nadie nos recibe el doc, lo leemos a viva voz — Voluntad Popular (@VoluntadPopular)February 25, 2014

Guards barricading the Cuban Embassy in Caracas on Tuesday

Protesters said they handed out a document to a national police representative outlining their concerns, then withdrew peacefully.

Comandante Ramírez de la PNB, de custodia de sedes diplomáticas, recibe el doc, nos retiramos de manera pacifica — Voluntad Popular (@VoluntadPopular)February 25, 2014

Protesters handed a document to a national police commander in charge of protecting the embassy.

In the video below, taken by Voluntad Popular outside the embassy, Arellano calls on the “Castro regime” to withdraw from Venezuelan territory.

Student leader Gabriela Arellano spoke outside the Cuban embassy in Caracas on Tuesday.

It’s not the first time that anti-government protesters have gathered at the Cuban Embassy in Caracas. Back in 2002, during a coup that briefly ousted former president Hugo Chavez, protesters broke the windows, pierced the tires and poured white paint into cars parked by the embassy, the AP reported then.

Venezuela’s close relationship with Cuba dates back to Chavez’s early days in power and was largely defined by Fidel Castro’s personal friendship with the former Venezuelan president, who was widely perceived as his ideological successor until his death last year.

But money also keeps the two nations’ interests aligned.

Venezuela is Cuba’s top trading partner and aid provider, to the tune of $3.5 billion and 115,000 barrels of oil a day, according to The Economist. Cuba pays its neighbor back in doctors, as well as in intelligence and security officers. It can also lend a hand in times of crisis.

Former intelligence officer and Cuban government critic Uberto Mario said in an interview that the elite Cuban troops known as Avispas Negras – literally the “black wasps” – have been traveling to Caracas undercover.

“They know how to infiltrate the protests, dressed as civilians, and this way they move all around Venezuela to neutralize the protests' advance,” Mario said. “They’re here for that, to repress.”

Several hundred people have been detained since the protests started, and there have also been reports of torture, including one of a student who was sexually assaulted with a rifle.

“The G2, the Cuban equivalent of the CIA, they have practice torturing citizens,” Barreto said. “We believe the reason they are here is to do those things.”

But if the Cuban government is watching Venezuelan protesters – and rather closely, according if the accusations of infiltration are true – so are its critics.

“There must be much nervousness in Havana’s Revolution Square,” Cuban blogger and activist Yoani Sanchez recently tweeted. “Venezuela is taking it by surprise.”

Meanwhile clashes between demonstrators and police have continued this week across Venezuela, as protesters organizing via social media and phone apps have set up barricades and snarled traffic.

This video, filmed in the Altamira Square area of Caracas on Monday, shows protesters moving away from loud explosions as smoke from a street fire fills the air.

Protesters clashed with police in Caracas on February 24.

Further protests are also planned through the week, including a women’s march on Wednesday, called by opposition congresswoman Maria Corina Machado and the wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez.

Protesters are also planning public memorials on Wednesday for the 14 people killed in clashes so far, and have called for a Friday mobilization of motorcyclists wearing white shirts and Venezuelan flags – a rebuttal to the motorcycles normally used by the national guard and pro-government colectivos.

They also planned a Saturday rally against the national oil and gas company, which is in the spotlight after Maduro reopened a controversial debate on gasoline price increases.

Finally, protesters are calling on fellow Venezuelans to boycott the upcoming Carnival holiday, which Maduro extended by two days in an attempt, many said, to distract the country from the unrest.

“He declared Thursday and Friday national holidays to tell people to go to the beach, go travel, get off the streets,” said Barreto. “We want to make sure that people don’t go to Carnival, that they stay in the streets.”

In Valencia, some have planned to lie down along the city’s highways in their bikinis “to tan,” Barreto said.

“That’s the way we’re gonna celebrate Carnival this year.”