MIAMI, United States. — The rape of a 19-year-old Cuban girl in the province of Artemisa has ended up exposing an alleged case of influence peddling.
As a result of the complaint made on Twitter by Rosyeilis de Armas Rodríguez —who claimed to have been raped on February 24 on a highway in San Cristóbal— feminist activists identified the brother of the rapist, who is none other Leonardo Rivera Menaformer first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in the Pinar del Río municipality of San Juan y Martínez.
The victim assured that the man who raped her, Luis Ángel Rivera Mena, a creep, was arrested the same afternoon that the events occurred, although he was later released thanks to the intervention of his brother, a soldier who supposedly held the rank colonel.
In October 2022, after Hurricane Ian passed through western Cuba, Leonardo Rivera Mena was provisionally appointed as first secretary of the PCC in San Juan y Martínez, one of the most affected by the meteor. He was substituted in office a month later.
Currently, Leonardo Rivera Mensa continues his political career as a member of the Provincial Bureau of the Party and is in charge of the Agri-food sphere in Pinar del Río.
In her complaint, Rosyeilis de Armas Rodríguez insisted that the rapist’s brother held the rank of colonel, which would have made it possible for the attacker to be released from prison.
“You put many people in jail every day for anything; for an illegal sale, for drunk driving, for a fight, for thousands of things, and then they come to tell me that they can’t put a rapist in jail because their brother colonel is doing the impossible to clear his name. I do not understand his type of justice and laws, but I have already reached my limit, I do not know what else to do, ”said the young woman in her complaint, addressed to the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel.
