MIAMI, United States. – The teenager Yenifer Vargas Gomez, around 15 years old, died on August 13 at the Children’s Hospital “Dr. Antonio Maria Beguez Cesar” in the city of Miami. Santiago de Cubadue to injuries inflicted by her ex-partner in the morning hours of the same day.
After be informed on social networks by activists and independent communicators, the crime It was confirmed by the platform for supporting people in situations of gender violence YoSíTeCreo in Cuba and by the Gender Observatory of Tense Wings (OGAT), a Cuban feminist magazine.
Both groups regretted the femicide, as well as its “particularly serious connotation” for “being committed against a teenager in tenth grade of pre-university education.”
YoSíTeCreo in Cuba and OGAT also sent their condolences to the family, friends, teachers and classmates of the teenager, who attended the “Rafael María de Mendive y Daumy” Pre-University Institute.
As of Wednesday, the under-reporting carried out by YoSíTeCreo in Cuba and the OGAT shows 32 femicides that have occurred on the island since January 1 of this year, as well as three attempted femicides and six cases whose nature has not been able to be determined due to the impossibility of accessing the police investigation.
In addition, both observatories have confirmed two gender-motivated murders of men, both of which occurred in 2024.
In early August, the island’s regime confirmed that a total of 110 women had been murdered at the hands of their partners or ex-partners throughout 2023. The figure, which was released by the Cuban Observatory on Gender Equality (state-run), only includes those cases that were tried during the past year and in which the victim was over 15 years old.
According to the agency, EFEthe rate of femicides on the Island (even without being exhaustive) is the sixth highest in all of Latin America and the Caribbean compared to the records of sexist murders of the Gender Equality Observatory of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) of 2022.
Gender-based violence in Cuba: only that which is reported
In 2023, YoSíTeCreo in Cuba and OGAT managed to verify 89 femicides, the highest number since both groups began collecting data in 2019.
Last December, the Cuban government itself acknowledged that 117 cases of “violent deaths of women” had taken place throughout the year, but did not acknowledge that these were femicides.
Several months earlier, in July, Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel himself assured that there was “a manifest imperial effort to create a climate of insecurity and citizen distrust”, which is why “it is constantly exaggerated[ba] any criminal act, especially cases involving violence and, in particular, those involving gender violence.”
Allegedly, the visibility of cases of gender-based violence in independent media and on social networks led the Government to propose an Interoperable Administrative Registry, “which allows for real-time information on the violent death of women and girls for reasons of gender”.
However, feminist organizations consider that this measure is insufficient and that the Government must take concrete actions to prevent and punish gender-based violence.
They also demand that the specific crime of femicide be classified, and that shelters and rescue systems be created for women and their families. children in danger, the legalization of activism and the approval of a comprehensive law against gender violence.
In December 2023, for the second time in the last decade, members of Cuban civil society handed over to the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP) a request for a comprehensive law against gender violence.
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