WASHINGTON — The U.S. designated Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1982, rescinded it in 2015, and redesignated it in 2021.
In 2025, former President Joe Biden moved to lift Cuba’s designation, but President Donald Trump quickly revoked the decision.
“Virtually every left-wing radical, violent terrorist group in the western hemisphere has at some point relied on support from Cuba,“ U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Rubio’s examples included the Ejército de Liberación Nacional, or ELN, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla that has operated in Colombia since the 1960s.
“Cuba continues to host a pretty substantial collection of intelligence sites on behalf of the Chinese and the Russians,” Rubio said during the hearing about the budget request for the 2027 fiscal year.
The administration requested $35.6 billion for the International Affairs budget, which includes about $33.6 billion for the State Department.
The mention of the guerrillas comes as Colombians prepare to vote in an election to replace President Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19, a Marxist guerrilla that surrendered in 1990.
Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, is standing behind Iván Cepeda, a socialist presidential candidate running against Abelardo de la Espriella, a supporter of President Donald Trump, on June 21.
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