HAVANA, Cuba. – “Cutting impunity at the root.” With that phrase, the note from the official journal Granma which reports the arrest of the confessed murderer of four people in the municipality of Ceballos, province of Ciego Ávila. The horrendous crime, which ended the lives of a four-year-old child and a 17-year-old teenager, has shocked Cubans inside and outside the country, but it has not been the only one. Last Monday It was confirmed that the young woman found dead in a garbage dump in Old Havana on August 23 was Lianet Núñez Pérez, 20 years old and reported missing just one day before.
However, the state press has not commented on this incident, so no details are known about what appears to be a new femicide. Citizens have not stopped criticizing both the lack of information and the lack of interest of the government media in these events, as well as the actions of the authorities, which, by all accounts, are not sufficient in the face of the increase in violent crimes in the country, a reality that the government denies, while insisting that Cuba is a safe country. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In recent years, gender-based assaults, riots, and the number of violent assaults and robberies have increased on the island. Although Cuba is considered the second safest country in Latin America – second only to Uruguay – a digital survey by the independent platform Cubadata, carried out in the first half of 2023, indicates that more than 60% of the people surveyed admitted to having suffered some type of violence or crime. Only 14.6% of the victims reported the incident to the police, a statistic that says a lot about citizens’ trust in law enforcement.
Insecurity has taken over the Cuban streets, becoming another reason of force majeure ―in addition to the fall in purchasing power, fuel shortages and the rise in the price of all goods and services― for not leaving home at night. If we add to this the fact that National Revolutionary Police (PNR) It is always available to repress dissidents, but never to help. It is understandable that citizens are alarmed, distrustful and critical of a government that, by trying so hard to control everything, has allowed public peace to slip through its fingers.
Every day Cuba is a less safe country. In the socialist paradise, many children between 12 and 16 years old have joined gangs in marginalized neighborhoods and circulate with knives in the streets, leading Incidents such as the one at the Monkey Farmwhich occurred on June 8. Stabbings and beatings with fatal outcomes are reported more frequently because the new wave of criminals is not content with just stealing; they are also willing to kill and do so with cruelty.
Little or nothing is said about the motivations of the attacker(s), but it is undeniable that crimes have increased and become more brutal as the country’s economic situation worsens. The government, far from offering viable alternatives, continues to mortgage the nation’s future against an improvement that may or may not come in the next few years. The feeling that there is no way out, together with the total breakdown of moral values and the certainty that the weight of the law is being reserved to punish peaceful opponents while common crimes are rampant, create a panorama that encourages criminality.
The five deaths reported in just six days are not enough to illustrate the magnitude of the problem. A post made on Facebook by a state journalist reports on other crimes that have occurred recently, which the official press has not reported on either. Worse still: in the comments to this post Several netizens, in addition to demanding capital punishment for the murderers, are reporting on other violent crimes that have occurred very recently; that is, lethal attacks are being systematically carried out in contradiction to what the Government claims about Cuba as a safe destination. Perhaps it is for tourists, entrenched in their hotels; but for nationals it is definitely not.
It is a shame to see that citizens who are critical of the dictatorship have been the target of popular repudiation and that at least one patrol car with two State Security motorcycles is stationed outside their homes to prevent them from leaving, while the faces of murderers and rapists do not even appear on national television so that the people know who they are.
It is a shame to know that those convicted of violent crimes have their right to conjugal visits, medical care and even parole respected, while political prisonerswho have not harmed anyone, suffer all kinds of harassment and the cruelty of a regime that makes them pay for their insurgency by imposing disproportionate sentences on them.
This is the Cuba suffered by those who have not been able to escape, the one hidden behind propaganda that is less and less effective, the one defended by the most obtuse left on the planet. A Cuba where impunity and silence combine to pave the way for the worst crime.
