American prosecutors accused, this Monday (4), in Miami, Víctor Manuel Rocha, former United States ambassador to Bolivia, of working secretly as an undercover agent for the Cuban government for four decades, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
“This action exposes one of the most far-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, in the document in which he detailed the accusation against Rocha, 73, arrested on Friday in Florida.
According to the complaint, from approximately 1981 to the present, Rocha, a Colombian-born American citizen, “secretly supported the Republic of Cuba and its clandestine intelligence gathering mission against the United States.”
To fulfill his mission, the accused obtained employment with the US State Department between 1981 and 2002, “in positions that provided him access to non-public information, including classified information, and the ability to influence American foreign policy”, stated the communicated.
After leaving the State Department, Rocha became an advisor to the United States Southern Command, a joint command of the American armed forces whose area of responsibility includes Cuba.
Between 1999 and mid-2002, he was US ambassador in La Paz, where he caused great controversy by threatening to withdraw US aid to the Bolivian war on drugs if leftist Evo Morales won the elections.
– A “meticulous” activity –
In 2022 and 2023, Rocha admitted to working for Cuba for “40 years” in meetings with an undercover FBI agent posing as a representative of Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence, according to the complaint.
During his conversations with this agent, Rocha celebrated his activity as a Cuban intelligence agent and repeatedly referred to the United States as “the enemy” and his Cuban contacts as “comrades.”
Prosecutors accuse him of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the attorney general; to act as an agent of a foreign government without prior notice to prosecutorial authorities; and of using a passport obtained through false declaration.
According to The New York Times, Rocha appeared in federal court in Miami this Monday, where he made no statement and burst into tears as his family left the room.
Also according to the newspaper, a prosecutor reported that more charges could soon be brought against him before a grand jury.
The State Department praised the work of security forces to unmask Rocha and reported that investigations continue.
“In the coming days, weeks and months, we will work with our intelligence community partners to assess the full long-term national security implications of this matter,” said Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
In Bolivia, Evo Morales, who was president between 2006 and 2019, reacted to the accusation against the former ambassador on the social network X (formerly Twitter). “May the renovators learn. First, when it suits it, the empire uses them to persecute, massacre and repress the indigenous and popular movement. When they are no longer useful, they are processed and dismissed. Manuel Rocha, while he was useful to the US, enjoyed impunity and reverence from neoliberals,” he wrote.
Several cases of espionage have affected relations between the United States and Cuba, enemies since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, in the midst of the Cold War.
In 2001, Ana Belén Montes, a military intelligence analyst, was arrested for espionage after admitting that she had been compiling information for Cuba for almost a decade.
The CIA, the American secret service, made several attempts to assassinate Cuban leaders after the failed landing at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
Relations between Washington and Havana, under an American embargo since 1962, remain tense to this day.