Cuban security advisers and doctors have been leaving Venezuela as Interim President Delcy Rodriguez’s government faces intense pressure from Washington to unwind Latin America’s most consequential leftist alliance, according to 11 sources familiar with the matter.
Venezuela’s Interim President Delcy Rodriguez has entrusted her protection to Venezuelan bodyguards, according to four of the sources, unlike deposed president Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor, the late president Hugo Chavez, who both relied on elite Cuban forces.
Thirty-two Cubans were killed in the U.S. military attack that captured Maduro on January 3, according to the Cuban government. These soldiers and bodyguards were part of a deep security agreement between Caracas and Havana that began in the late 2000s in which Cuban intelligence agents embedded throughout the military and Venezuela’s formidable DGCIM counterintelligence unit, which was fundamental to weeding out domestic opposition.
The Cuban influence was absolutely essential” to the survival of the Chavista government, said Alejandro Velasco, an associate professor of history at New York University and an expert on Venezuela.
Inside DGCIM, some Cuban advisers have been removed from their posts, according to a former Venezuela intelligence official. Some of the Cuban medical workers and security advisers have travelled from Venezuela to Cuba on flights in recent weeks, two of the sources said.