Madrid/The activist and writer Jorge Fernández Era has been missing since this Sunday afternoon he left his house to carry out the peaceful protest that he carries out on the 18th of each month. Although State Security has acted on previous occasions to prevent him from this activity, on this occasion none of his family and friends have been able to locate him by calling the Havana police stations. The news was announced by his wife, Laideliz Herrera, through a message on Facebook shortly after 7 p.m.
“My husband, Jorge Fernández Era, left at 3:00 pm towards Central Park to exercise the constitutional right to peacefully demonstrate, and has not returned,” she warned.
Activist Jenny Pantoja shared the same concern shortly after, adding that her attempts to locate him were being unsuccessful. “Several people have called the police stations and they tell us that he is not in any of them, that he does not appear in the system. We know how you and the In-State Security operate. They put activists and opponents in jail and do not register them. That is why they do not appear in the system of the National Repressive Police (PNR),” he denounced.
Pantoja, very upset, warned the authorities of the consequences if the situation continues. “I’m just telling you: release him or you will have to deal with many more people detained and your situation will be complicated,” he added. The message also contained a mention of the information that was released this Sunday about the approval of “plans and measures for the transition to the State of War”.
“We do not believe in a State of War, because that has been the phase that has been experienced in Cuba for some time now, total repression and without constitutional guarantees,” Pantoja snapped.
Other Cuban activists and opponents have joined her demand, including the professor and intellectual Alina Bárbara López, who began with these peaceful demonstrations, to which Fernández Era joined, in April 2023. The academic began this activity precisely as a result of the writer’s arrest that year and decided to do it periodically, every month in Matanzas, due to the political situation in the country, which has meant, both for her and for those who have decided to support her, several arrests in the last two years.
López also faces a trial for contempt, disobedience and attack, crimes for which the Prosecutor’s Office requests four years in prison. But that has not prevented him from continuing with his protests and just yesterday he was able to carry out his own, in Matanzas. This midnight, knowing that Fernández Era was still not located, he warned: “If tomorrow we do not hear from him, we will act as we should, with civility and determination.”
Activist Miryorly García was able, for her part, to demonstrate this Sunday “because of the deplorable state in which the Cuban nation finds itself and the need for a change that returns sovereignty to the people of Cuba,” she wrote on her social networks. The editor has been promoting a campaign to demand from the authorities an Amnesty for Cuban prisoners to which more than a thousand people have joined.
“Solidarity has been criminalized, but it is a matter of humanity to defend our brother or sister, daughter or son, mother or father, wife or husband, family member, neighbor or friend, compatriot. We must convert the shame of silence into the power of empathy, stand above fear and make the lesson become inspiration,” he recalled yesterday in a post in which he insisted on the importance of adhering to this demand despite the legitimate fear that exists in the population. “Nothing changes if we continue doing the same thing. It is, despite the consequences, changing the ‘Until when’ for ‘Enough’. Because if we unite we won’t fit in prisons, there are more of us,” he asks.
Last December, Jorge Fernández Era was also detained during his monthly protest, on this occasion in Matanzas, but he was located by his family in the usual manner and released a few hours later. On several of the multiple occasions in which the writer has been arrested, he has reported mistreatment, including the detention of July 2025when he was beaten by his lieutenant colonel at the Zanja station in Havana.
