SANTA CLARA, Cuba. – At the beginning of last November, in the middle of the night, a man forced open one of the blinds in my house and entered to steal while I was sleeping. Beyond the blow of the material loss of everything he managed to take, to this day the constant effect of retrospective panic persists in me, fueled by the almost absolute fact that whoever manages to violate a home in this way is also willing to end the lives of the inhabitants if necessary.
Without going into more details, so as not to implicate other people who were also affected by the incident, the worst thing is that, more than three months later, the Police have not captured the thief even though they had evidence that seemed sufficient to find him. To date, we have not even been notified of any conclusive results of the investigation. This is not, however, an occasional or isolated case. There is a popular belief that the advent of the end of the year usually causes an increase in criminal acts of this nature and, in fact, in the last stage of 2025, at least in Santa Clara, stories of robbery victims with similar modus operandi.
In December, a similar episode happened to a friend: they entered through a practically tiny window in his house and took all his valuables while he was sleeping. “They must be contortionists to have managed to enter like this,” he says. “They had not left any traces,” he laments, knowing that the act will go unpunished unless he himself identifies one of the stolen objects if they were put up for public sale and manages to track down the “seller.” On those same dates, two acquaintances had the bars of their respective homes violated indiscriminately and all the items they found on hand were stolen, including stoves, fans, gas cylinders, and a motorbike. “They must have parked a car in front to take all that,” one of the victims assumes. Another elderly woman who lives alone in the Vigía neighborhood has had attempts to break her key on three occasions and, although she suspects a criminal in the area, her conjectures and those of the neighbors do not constitute sufficient evidence for a possible arrest.
All of these victims who have agreed to tell their unfortunate experiences request anonymity, not only for fear of exposing themselves publicly but also that the culprits will never be captured and may be left at the mercy of possible much more serious revenge. While cases of robberies and assaults multiply, the predominant general feeling is that of helplessness. A search on social networks is enough to realize the number of public complaints in recent times about the increase in events of this type, even in small rural towns where such situations had rarely been reported.
On repeated occasions and since the middle of last year, residents of various neighborhoods in Camagüey reported on Facebook an unusual wave of assaults and robberies with force, testimonies that were made public thanks to the report by journalist José Luis Tan Estrada. Although the profiles allegedly managed by the MININT in this province they assured that the authorities had dismantled one of the gangs that operated mainly in the Bobes neighborhood, a recent publication by Univista TV reported that the crimes persist and that they include “thefts of gas cylinders, money [y] clothes” in homes, especially those inhabited by “elderly people, single mothers and children.” At the bottom of this publication, a few people from Camagüey claimed to have been victims of robberies by gangs that operate in all municipalities, according to a user identified as Ana Gloria Gelio, wrote in the comments. “The worst thing is that they don’t catch anyone and the cases remain unsolved. There is no security anywhere. Neither in the house, nor in the street. “We are unprotected,” the woman said.
The official discourse on many occasions has tried to soften the panorama by claiming that similar crime rates have always existed, and that it is the publications on social networks that try to stoke the feeling of panic. However, a recent report prepared by the Cuban Observatory of Citizen Audit (OCAC) recorded 2,833 reports of events of this type verified throughout the year, which represents an increase of 115.11% compared to 2024.
It is common for those affected by theft crimes to resort to the networks to expose their situation, due to the Police’s own delay in resolving their cases and as an expeditious means for relief, and even to offer considerable amounts of money to whoever identifies the stolen objects or the faces of the criminals when they are captured on camera. In January, a resident of the town of Violeta, located in Ciego de Ávila, denounced the theft of two horses and offered 100,000 pesos as a reward for some information on their whereabouts, if they had not already been sacrificed, according to what the affected person, Yandry González, published. In the comments of the publication, other people claimed to have proceeded in the same way, paying the thieves themselves to recover their animals.
In many other cases, victims have had to take justice into their own hands. In December, CubaNet reported the capture of an alleged thief in San Miguel del Padrón by several people who had been victims of robberies. In the video published by this medium, his request to the Police so that the alleged criminal not be released is recorded. Before that, it also transcended the video of the capture of an individual who was trying to enter a home around 1:00 in the morning in the Belascoaín area, in Havana. The neighbors had to hold him until the arrival of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) patrol, which did not arrive at the scene until dawn.
Near the Sandino stadium, in Santa Clara, a young woman who identifies herself as Cinthia was recently assaulted by an individual who covered his face with a balaclava. According to him, the criminal was hiding behind a post, approached him from behind and ordered him not to scream. He then demanded that, “for his own good,” he hand over the clothes and his cell phone. “I walked more than a block trembling, without looking back. I didn’t even go to the Unit [de la PNR] because, for what? I blacklisted the phone but those people [los ladrones] ends up selling them for parts. “They go about their business, as if they knew they were never going to get caught,” he laments.
A similar incident also occurred recently in Calabazar de Sagua: a girl was assaulted by two individuals who threatened her to make her hand over her gold chains and her phone. According to the complaintpublished on Samuel Rodríguez Ferrer’s Facebook profile and confirmed by family and neighbors, it was just 6:00 in the afternoon.
Of all this truly critical panorama, the most worrying thing is the use of firearms, as recognized by the OCAC report. In the middle of last month transcended an armed robbery in the town of Santo Domingo, in Villa Clara, by two individuals who followed the rented car to the town, and then threatened the victims at gunpoint and even stripped them of the vehicle with all their belongings.
