MIAMI, United States. – The platform to support people in situations of gender violence YoSíTeCreo in Cuba issued this Friday a Yeniset Alert to locate Bárbara Lozano Pendones, known as “Baby,” 44 years old, who was last seen on August 19 at the door of her house (Calle 6ta., No. 4225, between Central and 24 de Febrero, in Martín Pérez, San Miguel del Padrón municipality, Havana).
Barbara, who is 1.70 centimetres tall, has long black hair, brown eyes and a scar on the index finger of her left hand, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia at a psychotic level and has not received her medication due to the lack of fluphenazine decanoate, a drug that must be administered monthly by the Public Health system. In addition, she suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma.
This is the first time Barbara has been away from home, which has caused great concern, especially for the well-being of her nine-year-old daughter.
YoSíTeCreo in Cuba called on the community to collaborate in her search and asked anyone who has information about her whereabouts or who sees her to accompany her and immediately notify a National Revolutionary Police (PNR) station or call 106.
This case was verified by the @MeTooCuba platform through community sources.
In the article “Disappeared in Cuba”published in February 2023 in the magazine Tense Wings, Journalist and feminist activist Marta María Ramírez denounced “the lack of specific protocols for the disappearance of women on the island,” as well as “the failures of a system that refuses to recognize and act on a reality that is increasingly frequently denounced in public.”
In the same article, the journalist and activist launched her proposal for a Mayde Alert for missing persons in Cuba, inspired by The case of the Havana teenager Maydeleisis Rosaleswho has not been heard from for three years.
The Yeniset Alert is inspired by the case of Yeniset Rojas Pérez, who disappeared for 10 months in the municipality of Ranchuelo, in Villa Clara. On January 23, 2023, after locating the body, the young woman’s family confirmed what was already assumed to be a femicide.
For Ramírez, especially the case of Maydeleisis Rosales revealed that Cuba did not have (nor does it still have) a protocol for missing girls and boys.
“The police response not only reveals a significant lack of protocol, but also a failure to comply with what the Cuban State has said it does not only within Cuba, but outside of Cuba,” Ramirez said to CubaNet last March.
