January 22, 2026

The following is an interview of Cuban internationalist combatant Yohandris Varona Torres, who was in the unit that confronted the U.S. imperialist invasion of Caracas on Jan. 3. The interview was done by Ignacio Ramonet (author of “100 Hours with Fidel”). Translation: Walter Lippmann, publisher of Cuba News, a daily roundup of articles from and/or about socialist Cuba.

Yohandris Varona Torres had been a member of the Personal Security Unit in Venezuela for two months and six days when the attack occurred, the most intense experience in his 23 years of military service, right on his first internationalist mission.

But that Saturday, Jan. 3, turned out to be fateful. At midnight, he took up his position for a six-hour shift. Although everything seemed calm, Yohandris knew that the greatest danger lay in complacency. That is why he carried out his duties with zeal bordering on excess.

It was around 2 a.m. when he saw the first of the helicopters belonging to the group of U.S. commandos that would land in Caracas that morning to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro.

He barely had time to leave the guard post where he was on duty to take cover a few meters away and start shooting. He owes his life to that decision, or to luck. As if guided by a map of millimeter precision, the attackers directed their fire at the guard post he had occupied just seconds before.

“They had much more firepower than we did,” says Yohandris. “We only had light weapons. The other thing in their favor was that they seemed to know where everything was. So they fired at the barracks and dormitories where we Cubans were staying and managed to kill the leaders among the first.”

This first non-commissioned officer has some 23 years of experience in the Personal Security Directorate and had never experienced anything like this before. But he had been well trained, and that morning he emptied magazine after magazine firing at the enemies.

“We had to shoot and shoot. Defend and kill,” he said. “We fought there against the planes that were strafing us. Even though our weapons were smaller, we didn’t stop fighting; we confronted them. I am trained, and I know how to fight, but they were more heavily armed than we were. At that moment, my only thought was to fight. We had to shoot, and I started doing it.”

More U.S. casualties than admitted

“Despite their firepower advantage,” Yohandris added, “I’m sure we inflicted casualties on them. More than they admit. We fought hard. We kept shooting until almost all of us were falling, dead or wounded.”

It was not a quick or easy battle, as Trump and his henchmen initially tried to make people believe. As the days have passed, it has become clear that only death and a lack of ammunition managed to quell the Cubans’ resistance.

Yohandris remembers everything with terrible clarity. His eyes seem to review the images one by one. He cries. He cries with rage.

He will never be able to forget the confrontation, he says, but above all the hours that followed, when the survivors of the group had to move the bodies of their fallen comrades.

“We carried them and took them to a building that had been damaged but allowed us to shelter them. It was very hard, because they were men we knew, with whom we had lived until a few hours earlier. But we took them all, we didn’t abandon any of them.

“When the bombs start falling, the only thing you think about is fighting. That’s why we were there, and that’s what we did. All I’m left with is the pain of not being able to stop them. And this pain,” he says, beating his chest, “I have to take out on the enemy.”