Cubans lowered flags before dawn Monday to mourn 32 officers who died in the weekend strike against the president of Venezuela. Venezuelan oil has kept Cuba's economy limping along for years. Many in Cuba were questioning what the US operation will mean for Cuba, Venezuela’s closest ally. The nations are so close that Cubans often were Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro's bodyguards. Many say Cuba, an island of about 10 million people, exerted a remarkable degree of influence over the oil-rich country with three times as many people. Cubans, tormented by constant blackouts and shortages of basic foods, woke to the once-unimaginable possibility of an even grimmer future. ‘I can’t talk. I have no words,’ 75-year-old Berta Luz Sierra Molina said, sobbing.
