The complaints resonated in the town of Guamo Viejo, where some 950 houses and 3,500 inhabitants were affected.
LIMA, Peru – While many residents of Río Cauto, Granma province, took refuge from the floods caused by Hurricane Melissa, others took advantage of the chaos of the meteorological event to rob evacuated families.
A report from the state Caribbean Channel acknowledged that at least 17 people are detained and under investigation for committing robberies in homes affected by the cyclone.
The news emerged in the midst of the recent tour of the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel through the affected territories of Eastern Cuba. In particular, the complaints resonated in the town of Guamo Viejo, where some 950 houses and 3,500 inhabitants were affected.
The robberies, the regime authorities acknowledged, occurred while the inhabitants remained outside their homes due to the flooding of the Cauto River, the largest in Cuba.
The looting not only targeted homes, but also the agricultural properties of neighbors, events that aggravated the resulting losses once the hurricane passed.
According to the official report, both Díaz-Canel and the prime minister of the regime, Manuel Marrero, called “to be severe with those who commit crimes.”
Other damages and reports of abandonment
After more than two weeks of Hurricane Melissa passing through eastern Cuba – which left more than 90,000 homes damaged and around 100,000 hectares of crops affected, according to data from the United Nations System on the Island—hundreds of residents of Holguín, Santiago de Cuba and Granma assure that the announced international aid is not reaching the hardest hit communities.
After a publication of CubaNet on Facebook inviting readers from the east of the country to report what they had received, the response is overwhelming: almost 800 comments in a few hours, mostly denouncing minimum deliveries, sales in warehouses or total absence of donations.
The testimonies describe a panorama of precariousness that contradicts the official discourse. Neighbors from different Holguín municipalities claimed to have received only basic rations. One user wrote: “Two pounds of rice, one of oil and peas, from then on nothing more.”
Another resident of Holguín indicated that they were only given “1 pound of sugar,” while a third reported that “a given package arrived as a gift but noted in the quota as that month’s rice and a pound of sugar.”
In San Germán, Holguín, another person said that first they received “one pound of rice and then four,” and nothing more. In neighborhoods like Vista Alegre, also in Holguín, they claim that they have not received sales or donations, and that some areas continue without electricity due to transformers damaged by the cyclone.
The complaints are repeated in Santiago de Cuba. From Chivirico, in the Guamá municipality, a resident stated that what arrived were products sold in poor condition: “churrioso rice”, peas “from how many years ago because they are difficult to soften” and a can of sardines that he presumes came from Spanish donations.
