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Nicolas Maduro had Cuban soldiers for bodyguards. How true to history of a tyrant.
Roman emperors used foreign bodyguards, notably the fierce Germanic fighters of the Batavian tribe, who it is said could swim rivers in full armor. Being outsiders and completely dependent upon their employer for everything, they were fiercely loyal.
Some 22 or 23 Venezuelans, apparently mostly soldiers guarding targeted defense installations, were killed in the Jan. 3 raid by U.S. military forces. What caught my attention was the 32 active-duty Cuban soldiers killed, including several officers. They were identified as Maduro's personal security force. That certainly fits the profile of foreign bodyguards used throughout history. It is an unwise tyrant who has his own countrymen guard his life.
Why Cubans?
After Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez survived an attempted coup in 2002, "Fidel Castro sent Cuban military and intelligence officers as bodyguards and advisors to take over Chavez's security and revamp the Venezuelan army and spy agencies. Providing personal security and intelligence assessment to the Venezuelan leader was part of a grand bargain that led to Venezuelan oil flowing to Cuba. The agreement continued under Maduro." Thus sayeth my internet AI.
"Maduro had a Praetorian Guard" was my first thought upon reading news accounts of the raid, but that is not a true parallel. Praetorian Guards in the Roman Empire were usually native Italians. Yes, they were the emperor's bodyguards, but they also were his spies and personal police force, arresting or executing political enemies. They were aware of political realities and sometimes assumed the role of kingmakers, drawing their own swords to dispatch an unpopular emperor and install one to their liking. Praetorian Guards were involved in the killing of some 13 Roman emperors. When Nero, for instance, learned soldiers were coming for him, he killed himself. His German guards had been sidelined and his Praetorians stood aside.
Herod the Great was king of Judea, a client nation of the Roman Empire. He employed Germanic bodyguards on the Roman model. The Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II recruited the Sherden, former sea pirates, to guard his person. In the late 10thCentury the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantines, employed the Varangian Guard, made up of Vikings and Anglo-Saxons from the far north.
The Janissaries were legendary fighters often hired out as mercenaries or personal guards. They were Christian children taken in the Balkans by the Ottomans, converted to Islam and trained as fierce slave-soldiers, absolutely loyal to their fellows and patron.
We may think of the Swiss nation as neutral and peaceable, but its soldiers have long been capable professionals, often hired out as mercenaries. Swiss soldiers guarding the doomed King Louis XVI died defending him in the French Revolution of 1792.
Swiss guards have guarded Roman Catholic popes since 1506. Tourists photograph Swiss guards carrying halberds and marching in colorful uniforms, while the security professionals they don't see carry automatic weapons and monitor video screens.
Currently, American soldiers or contractors supervise security for the Royal Family of the Kingdom of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, an uncomfortably close parallel to Maduro's Cubans.
What now for Venezuela, Maduro and Cuba? You will hear barely a tittle of complaint over Maduro, his fate of interest only to Democrats as a club to swing ineffectually at President Trump . Venezuela will, we hope, become a reasonable facsimile of a prosperous democracy. Cuba, deprived of Venezuela's oil and money and not worth one American life to capture, may fall of its own weight or putter along as the socialist utopia it never was nor will be.
There are a couple of lessons to be learned from all this. Lesson One, don't think our country has forgotten the Monroe Doctrine. Lesson Two, don't hire Cubans to provide security. You might try the Swiss, though.
Forgive me for today's little detour into politics and history. I do love them both.