MEXICO CITY.- Leo Alejandro Doval, Adriano Rodríguez and Fabián Naranjo have been reported by their relatives as missing in the Matanzas incident. The three young men were serving active military service and were transferred to the Supertankers area to try to put out the fire. The boys were in the front line of fire on August 5 when the flames flared and the explosions occurred.
Although there is no official public information on the status of these young people, or the rest of the disappeared, relatives and friends of the boys have posted messages of condolences on social networks.
In the specific case of Leo Alejandro Doval, 19, the publications of relatives and close people confirm his death.
His grandmother Vivian López wrote: “Just a boy who was going to enter his truncated youth stage. Shattered his dreams and life projects. He dreamed of being a neurosurgeon and enthusiastically told us about it. My boy is not a martyr, he is a victim of Compulsory Military Service. Excuse me, the pain does not allow me to continue. He didn’t have to be there.”
Previously, his aunt Yunia Doval had specified that her nephew had only spent a 15-day course in the fire department and was an “inexperienced little boy” that the only fire he had seen in his life “was the one in his mother’s kitchen.”
Leo, who was preparing to study medicine once he finished his service, was described by a friend as a “boy who loved Madrid, who defended his team tooth and nail in every game, the faithful follower of Marvel, who He said that if you didn’t watch all the movies in order you weren’t a true fan, the one you asked him, hey, what career are you going to take? And he told you: medicine, – and you’re not afraid of blood? – no, I am going to be a potential neurosurgeon”.
Her friend closes the post saying that he was “simply a 19-year-old who wants to take on the world.”
Relatives of Fabián Naranjo, another of the missing recruits who was doing military service at the Varadero Airport Fire Department, also hold the Cuban state responsible for exposing the integrity of young people.
“Who is going to take responsibility for bringing those inexperienced kids to such a dangerous scene? Who ordered them to place themselves in the red zone, where they would be hit by the flames if the strength of the fire increased, as it happened? Who was it that did not think that they were endangering the lives of children, that their parents from home were doing safe and sound? These are some of the questions that Yanelys Naranjo asks herself.
“Today they don’t have an answer to give us. We can only wait. Waiting for. What we hoped was that they would be safe and sound, fulfilling their Compulsory Military Service. And that at the end of this period to which everyone goes without wanting to be there, forced, to see them enter the house with their stage expired. Who is going to take responsibility?
In addition to Leo and Fabián, Adriano Rodríguez, also 19, is among the victims. According to what a neighbor of the family told CubaNet, the authorities have not yet confirmed the death, and his parents are in Matanzas waiting for his son to be found.
This Monday, August 8, CubaNet confirmed the death of Michel Rodriguez Roman (20 years)who was serving Active Military Service in Fire Command number three.
Of the 16 people who remained missing, the figure was reduced to 14, after the First Secretary of the Party in Matanzas, in statements broadcast on the National Television News, said that two are in hospitals among the injured.
The Cuban government, four days after the start of the fire, has refused to expose the identity of the disappeared and their ages. A practice that is not usual. Let us remember that this information was available in recent incidents such as the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel and the plane crash in Havana, and that today they could be hiding to avoid criticism of the negligence of exposing young recruits to such danger.
In recent months, the demands of fathers and mothers for the elimination of military service have been made visible in the press because they do not consider it safe spaces for their children.
Although the Cuban state does not make information transparent in this regard, reports of deaths in the SMA are systematic. At the end of July, CubaNet published an inrecipient database where we recorded the deaths of young people while serving the Service.
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