By Javier Herrera
HAVANA TIMES – I’ve said it a thousand times: I wish I didn’t have to write about this devastating topic ever again, but if I don’t, I feel like I’m betraying my conscience. The value of women’s lives in Cuba continues to be minimal, and they are snatched away in plain sight, with the indifference of authorities who only apprehend the perpetrator without having done anything before to prevent the crime.
In the past year, feminist groups like YoSíTeCreo in Cuba and the Gender Observatory of Alas Tensas magazine documented 88 feminicides, while investigating nine more cases lacking reliable or police data. These are 88 murders that leave broken families, orphaned children, traumas, pain… what’s worse, often the killer is the father or stepfather of those children who will grow up without their mothers and who sometimes witnessed the events or were attacked themselves.
Thanks to the pressure from independent platforms of civil society, the Cuban regime was forced to acknowledge the violent death of 117 women in 2023, though without specifying how many were victims of gender-based violence and downplaying the events with the words of the designated president Miguel Diaz-Canel, stating that “in the case of Cuba, the truth is exaggerated for political purposes by dissident platforms.”
In less than 15 days of 2024, three women lost their lives at the hands of their partners or ex-partners, almost equaling the weekly death average of 2023 when a woman died approximately every 4.14 days.
The first of the homicides occurred on January 2 in the province of Camagüey. Diana Rosa Cervantes Mejia
