Antonio Silvino Díaz Yera, a 57-year-old man who worked as a cart driver in Santa Clara, died this Monday after being assaulted and stabbed outside the Los Caneyes hotel. The Police arrested two suspects, and the investigation remains open, since the horse and cart, whose theft was the alleged motive for the murder, have not been found.
“He had gone out for a trip and never came back,” he tells 14ymedio Laurien López, niece of the deceased and resident of Camajuaní, who denounced the crime. Díaz’s still-living body was found in the morning by a resident of the Los Caneyes area, a hotel located on the outskirts of the city and very close to the mausoleum of the Che Guevara.
Immediately, the man called a patrol car and Díaz was transferred to the Arnaldo Milián Provincial Clinical-Surgical Hospital. “He arrived with a stab wound to the chest, his throat cut and with many blows. He had almost no vital signs and was almost dead,” says López. “He died in the living room, while they were trying to save him.”
“The police arrested two people who had blood-stained clothes, but they didn’t want to talk,” says Díaz’s niece. However, there was no sign of the cart or the horse.
“He arrived with a stab wound to the chest, his throat cut and with many blows. He had almost no vital signs and was almost dead”
Despite the fact that the place where López was assaulted is frequently visited by tourists, it is a remote area in the vicinity of which neighborhoods of arrive and put. The most notable of them, where crime is frequent, is located right next to the pharaonic Guevara mausoleum.
“The family is very bad because of what happened. My uncle had a slight mental retardation. He had no children and lived with a cousin of ours,” says López. “He was not dedicated to transporting people but rather some loads, such as bagasse from the guaraperas, and he took it to the dump. He lived between Roble and Síndico streets. From time to time someone saw him and gave him an order.”
In December 2022, another coachman from Villa Clara, identified as osvaldo, was also murdered to steal his horse in the municipality of Encrucijada. The crime was reported on social networks, but the Police did not offer any official version. In his case, as happened with López, he also went out to carry out an errand and did not return to his house. He was found in a cane field, with his throat cut and a mutilated hand.
Last April, another coachman from Jinaguayabo, a rural town near Remedios and the luxurious Cayería Norte de Villa Clara, explained to this newspaper that their route had become a highly dangerous area.
In the middle of a journey, he picked up three people who were waiting on the road and shortly after he was robbed. “When they were reaching the bridge, the one behind me tied a strap around my neck and forced me to park in the ditch.” They took the phone, some bluetooth headphones, his watch and the collection of the day, 2,500 pesos. “At least they left me the horse and cart,” he recounted with some relief. “Now we have to see if I can buy back what I lost, because the Police are not going to find the thieves.”
The violent theft of animals in Cuban fields has also been on the rise for the past two years and Villa Clara tops the list of unsafe provinces.
The violent theft of animals in Cuban fields has also been on the rise for the past two years, with Villa Clara topping the list of unsafe provinces.
A report published in this newspaper last July exposed the methods of thieves to steal large and small livestock from private farms. The criminals study the place and the owners of the animals well, and use different painkillers to sedate oxen, cows and pigs, which they then transport in carts or dismember on the spot.
Violence and murder are increasingly accompanying assaults on the island. This Tuesday, a priest from Santiago de Cuba, Eliosbel Pereira, was assaulted to take away his motorcycle. The priest also received a machete blow to the left hand that required surgery.
Laurien López, who lamented the murder of his uncle on Facebook this Tuesday, is clear about the urgency of resolving the situation of insecurity in the country: “Stop those speeches about the country advancing. It does advance, but in delinquency and crimes “, he rebuked. “The Cuba that once was calm is very dangerous.”
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