On August 13, part of a Chevron station in Miami was set ablaze by a stranger whom authorities are still seeking. In a society that fills every possible corner, doorway, and column with cameras, I assume it won’t take long to track down the arsonist. The local sheriff’s office released a flyer on August 18 requesting information about the suspect.

Some might say the incident described above is unfortunate but relatively common in a megacity. How many deranged individuals stab or push fellow citizens onto subway tracks in New York? How many set fire to forests in Los Angeles? However, several elements alter the perception of the story.

First, the suspect reportedly arrived at the gas station carrying a sign with the message: “Cuban lives matter, End Embargo” — the latter being a demand of the regime and its acolytes.

Other noteworthy aspects of the story are the location and the timing. Miami — where the fire occurred — has been the capital of the Cuban exile community since the 1960s. These are the men and women who fled the hemisphere’s longest-running tyranny and built, out of swampy waters, a metropolis that surpassed New York and Los Angeles in the luxury real estate market.

Regarding the timing — a key to interpreting the incident — it is worth recalling that August 13 marked the centenary of the birth of dictator Fidel Castro, a symbol of socialism’s failure and an icon for the failures who follow socialism. Could the Miami arsonist be one of them?

The radicalization of Americans into socialist ideology, along with their organization and training to commit acts against this country, is nothing new in recent U.S. history.

In July, the State Department released the report “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” Its 100 pages describe Havana’s support for sectors of the U.S. radical Left through training and connections — including organizations like the Weather Underground and other revolutionary groups from the 1960s and 1970s.

The report maintains that members of that organization traveled to Cuba via the Venceremos Brigade, received training, and were subsequently assisted by Cuban agents with travel or communications. Karen Bass, the current mayor of Los Angeles, was one of the “fruits” (sour ones, in my opinion) of those efforts.

Less than three weeks after the report on these past subversive undertakings by the Castro regime was published, gas pump number 2 at the Chevron station on the corner of Bird Road and 87th Avenue in Southwest Miami exploded. Perhaps this is a sign of how Havana continues to serve as an inspiration for acts of domestic violence.

In a video circulating on social media and in the news, a hooded individual placed a bag over the gas pump before an explosion occurred, throwing the person several feet backward. After lying on the ground for several seconds, the individual got up and fled the scene.

In January, President Donald Trump formally declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security. The State Department maintains that Cuba cooperates on military, intelligence, and security matters with U.S. adversaries.

The document noted at the time that “Cuba continues to try to thwart United States efforts to address threats to the United States posed by hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors, including in the Western Hemisphere.” It further added that, contrary to the interests and foreign policy of the United States, “the Cuban communist regime supports terrorism and destabilizes the region through migration and violence.”

In February of this year, dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel responded: “We are not a threat to the United States.”

He explained that Cuban military doctrine was exclusively defensive and that it “in no way contemplates [...] aggression against another country.” Without his voice wavering under the weight of his lies, he maintained that Cuba “has never acted to harm the American people, nor has it ever set out to affect U.S. national security.”

Let anyone who knows nothing of history believe that!