Independent journalist Yeris Curbelo Aguilera
Beating and jailing a journalist
Cuban journalist Yeris Curbelo Aguilera was sentenced to two years in prison on September 24, 2024 following a two hour trial in the Niceto Pérez Municipal Court in the Province of Guantánamo with irregularities that fell short of international standards to restrict his work in support of press freedom in Cuba. He was immediately taken to the Guantánamo Combinado prison by State Security agents.
Both Yeris and his son Jessy Curbelo Garrido on separate occasions were targets of violent assaults on June 18, 2024 and April 14, 2024 respectively by the same three young men. However, Yeris was also attacked by Adrián Fuentes Lafita who injured the reporter with a machete. The actual reason for the attacks and the prison sentence are due to his reporting on the May 2023 demonstrations in Caimanera, and Yeris speaking out against the situation of youth jailed for protesting socio-economic conditions and calling for freedom. and their families harassed for speaking up for their imprisoned loved ones.
Yeris made a video statement prior to his political show trial, and the statement is transcribed below.
Refusing medical care to a prisoner of conscience
“Donaida Pérez Paseiro:: “My husband, Loreto Hernández García, is dying in prison”
For example, Loreto Hernández García, a Cuban prisoner of conscience, is in critical condition, according to his brother Jorge Luis García Pérez, or “Antúnez,” as reported by ADN Cuba.
“Antúnez” claimed that the situation is growing increasingly desperate due to Hernández’s lack of access to vital medications and inadequate sustenance.
“They are denying us the most basic things for his treatment, and when they do provide the medications, it’s done irregularly,” Antúnez said. He further stated that the dictatorship has refused to provide Hernández an extra-penal license, which would allow him to get proper medical care outside of prison.
In August 2024, Hernández experienced recurrent shortness of breath and complications from his diabetes.
“Donaida Pérez Paseiro, a prisoner of conscience, has launched an urgent appeal: “My husband, Loreto Hernández García, is dying in prison” Loreto Hernández García’s health continues to decline, his family reports. Despite medical recommendations for his immediate release, the Cuban authorities are keeping him in prison, putting his life at risk. Loreto continues to receive no medication and no adequate food. Loreto and Donaida, who are prisoners of conscience, were unjustly sentenced after their participation in the peaceful protests of July 11, 2021. The UN has already expressed concern about the abuses committed against them and other religious leaders in Cuba. Donaida fears that Loreto will not survive much longer if he is not released. We cannot allow him to die in prison! We demand that Miguel Diaz Canel be released immediately and that his human rights be respected.”
“Castro, Inc. loves it when one of its political prisoners becomes gravely ill. Denying them medical care is such an easy and convenient way to kill troublemakers and keep pretending that there is no death penalty in Castrogonia. Yoruba religious leaderLoreto Hernández García, who is serving a long prison term for his participation in the 11 July 2021 protests, is the latest potential victim of this method of execution.“
Violent crime can no longer be covered up
Will Grant in his article published in the BBC on September 25, 2024 titled “‘The violence is getting out of hand’: Crime grips Cuba’s streets” claims that the island was safer under Fidel Castro’s rule, does not take into account that under Cuban totalitarianism at full peak under Fidel Castro it was also easier to cover up criminal violence, but the murder and disappearance of tourists still took place. Grant pointed out the scarcity of guns as a factor in the low crime rates, but even when Fidel Castro was still running things Cubans were being gunned down during crimes back then.
Mr. Grant did quote who he described as “another recent victim of opportunistic theft on Havana’s dimly lit streets.”
Shyra is a transgender activist who is used to speaking out about rights in Cuba. She says that her story, of being robbed by a man brandishing a knife one evening, is common. But it was the police response which disillusioned her the most. “Just after I was attacked, I came across two motorcycle police in a side street,” Shyra recalls. Despite her obvious distress, the police ignored her pleas for help, she says. “They openly told me: ‘We’re not here for stuff like that.’ It was such a shocking thing to hear because I told them where they could find the attacker, showed them which direction he was headed in, what he was wearing. But they just didn’t pay me any attention.”
Tim Johnson and Elaine de Valleof the Miami Herald reported on a story of a horrific crime in Cuba.
“A Hialeah Gardens couple was buried in Cuba Tuesday, one day after their bodies were found along with those of their daughter, an 8-year-old grandson and a family friend in what appeared to be a rare and gruesome roadside robbery. Family members identified the Florida residents as Ada Lorenzo, 52, and Celedonio Placencia, 60, who were assaulted late Sunday or early Monday as they traveled from Havana to their family’s home in Santa Clara. The three other victims lived on the island: one of the couple’s twin daughters, 28-year-old Yailén Placencia; their grandson Daniel Osmani Placencia Pérez; and Domingo Delgado, a family friend who picked them up at José Martí International Airport in Havana. The couple had flown to Cuba on Sunday to visit Celedonio Placencia’s gravely ill mother, family members said. Their bodies were found along a stretch of the Ocho Vias highway near Matanzas. Relatives in Florida said they were shot and stabbed and that the couple’s daughter had her throat slit.”
Claudia von Weiss’s grave was apparently discovered in Cuba in 2023, but mystery continues to surround her death, but officials barred the exhumation of the remains to compare with Claudia’s dental records, and remains.
The priority of the dictatorship’s police is preserving the existing regime, not protecting public safety. Chris Simmons, a counter intelligence expert, who testified before Congress made the following assessment of the Cuban government.
In his Bloomberg column “Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua Are Black Holes the United Nations Can’t Ignore” on September 24, 2024, he warned that Cuba, together with Nicaragua and Venezuela, is part of a troika of criminal governments undermining Latin American democracy, and issues a call to action.
“But above all, it’s crucial to let the oppressed people of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela know they have not been abandoned to a malign destiny, and that the democratic countries of the region will continue combating the dangers these regimes pose. In a week when most Latin American leaders are in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, the situation of these countries should be in everyone’s meetings and speeches. If we want democracy to flourish again in the continent, we need to speak up loudly, with one voice, against the perils of autocracy.“
Your News, September 25th, 2024
Regime sentences independent journalist Yeris Curbelo to two years in prison
On September 24, independent journalist Yeris Curbelo Aguilera was sentenced to two years in prison by a court in Guantanamo for the alleged crime of minor injuries.
Following the trial, Curbelo was transferred to the Guantanamo Combined Prison, according to Martí Noticias .
His wife, Odalis Legrá Castellanos, told the Center for a Free Cuba that the defense attorney disagreed with the sanction imposed, arguing that evidence of injuries suffered by the journalist was not considered.
The case dates back to incidents that occurred between April and June 2024, when Curbelo and his 16-year-old son were attacked by several individuals. The journalist maintains that these events were orchestrated by the regime to charge him with common crimes.
The journalist , a contributor to CubaNet and the Palenque Visión agency, reported on the protests that occurred in Caimanera, Guantánamo, in May 2023.
After covering the protests, Curbelo was interrogated and threatened with prison.
Protests in the town of Caimanera, Guantanamo, occurred on May 6, 2023; protesters demanded freedom, food, and adequate medical care in hospitals.
During the protests, the dictatorship repressed the population and cut off the internet between 9:30 pm and 11:30 pm throughout the country.
The protesters were sentenced by the Niceto Pérez Municipal People’s Court to prison terms ranging from two to eight years on charges including incitement to commit a crime, public disorder and attack.
@ADNCuba
Babalu Blog, September 25th, 2024
Cuban political prisoner Loreto Hernández García is in critical condition, being denied medical care
From our Bureau of Socialist Compassion and Social Justice with some assistance from our Bureau of Executions by Natural Causes
Castro, Inc. loves it when one of its political prisoners becomes gravely ill. Denying them medical care is such an easy and convenient way to kill troublemakers and keep pretending that there is no death penalty in Castrogonia. Yoruba religious leader Loreto Hernández García, who is serving a long prison term for his participation in the 11 July 2021 protests, is the latest potential victim of this method of execution.
Loosely translated from ADN Cuba
The health of Cuban political prisoner Loreto Hernández García is in a critical condition, according to his brother Jorge Luis García Pérez, also known as “Antúnez,” as reported by ADN Cuba.
“Antúnez” stated that the situation is becoming increasingly desperate due to the lack of access to necessary medications and inadequate nutrition for Hernández’s health conditions.
“They are denying us the most basic things for his treatment, and when they do provide the medications, it’s done irregularly,” Antúnez denounced. He also highlighted that the regime has refused to grant Hernández an extra-penal license, which would allow him to receive proper medical care outside of prison.
In August, Hernández experienced frequent shortness of breath and complications due to his diabetes.
Hernández, serving a seven-year sentence for his participation in the July 2021 protests, suffers from diabetes and hypertension, both of which have worsened during his imprisonment at Guamajal prison in Villa Clara.
While incarcerated, authorities have attempted to persuade Hernández to accept a sentence reduction and other privileges in exchange for softening his stance against the regime. However, both he and his wife, Donaida Pérez Paseiro, who is also a political prisoner, have rejected these offers.
Organizations like Amnesty International consider both Loreto Hernández and Donaida Pérez Paseiro to be prisoners of conscience.
BBC, September 25, 2024
‘The violence is getting out of hand’: Crime grips Cuba’s streets
By Will Grant
The late leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, once famously called Cuba “the safest country in the world”.
In terms of the island’s low rates of violent crime and the scarcity of guns circulating among the civilian population, he may well have had a case for that title.
His critics, of course, responded that the low crime rate was achieved through intimidation, that Castro’s Cuba was – and still remains – a police state which brokered no criticism of its communist-led government, and which rode roughshod over its opponents’ human rights.
However it was done, few could deny that Cuba’s streets have traditionally been among the safest in the Americas.
Yet it doesn’t feel to Samantha González like she lives in the world’s safest nation. Her younger brother, an aspiring music producer called Jan Franco, was murdered two months ago in an apparent gang-related dispute.
From the low-income Havana neighbourhood of Cayo Hueso and just 19 years old when he was killed, Jan Franco was stabbed twice in the chest outside a recording studio, caught in the middle of an argument when someone pulled a knife.
“I still can’t understand it,” says Samantha, struggling to express her grief as she scrolls through old photos of her brother on her phone.
“He was the light of our family.”
Just 20 herself and mother of a one-year-old boy, Samantha says that Jan Franco was one of many young people to lose their lives in the streets in recent months:
“So many young people have been killed this year,” she explains.
“The violence is getting out of hand. They’re basically gangs, and they fall out with each other as gangs. That’s where it’s all coming from, these killings and deaths of young people.”
They often solve their quarrels with knives and machetes, she says.
“Almost no-one settles an argument with their fists anymore. It’s all knives, machetes, even guns. Things I just don’t understand,” her voice trails off.
The situation has been worsened by a new drug in Cuba called “quimico” – a cheap chemical high with a cannabis base. Samantha says that it’s increasingly popular among Cuban youth in the parks and on the streets.
Previously, even suggesting that Cuba had a problem with opioids and street gangs – especially to a foreign journalist – could land you in difficulties.
The Cuban authorities have always been fiercely protective of their island’s reputation as crime-free and quick to point out that the streets are demonstrably safer than those of most cities in the US. Anything that highlights Cuba’s social problems is generally painted as biased criticism of their socialist system or as anti-revolutionary fabrications originating from Miami or Washington.
However, such has been the public perception of a worsening crime rate, a perception shared by many Cubans on social media, that the authorities have openly addressed it on state television.
In August, an edition of nightly talk programme Mesa Redonda – in which Communist Party officials are invited on air to deliver the party line – was titled Cuba Against Drugs.
During the broadcast, Colonel Juan Carlos Poey Guerra, the head of the interior ministry’s anti-drug unit, acknowledged the existence, production and distribution of the new drug, químico, and its impact on Cuba’s youth. He insisted the authorities were tackling the issue.
In another edition, on crime, the government denied the situation was worsening, claiming only 9% of crimes in Cuba were violent and just 3% were murders.
However, critics question the transparency of the government’s statistics and say there’s no independent oversight of the bodies which produce them or the methodologies they use.
For its part, the government largely blames the old enemy, the United States, for both the existence of synthetic opioids in Cuba and for the decades-long US economic embargo on the island which they say is the reason some Cubans have resorted to crime.
In a rare interview, the vice-president of Cuba’s Supreme Court, Maricela Sosa Ravelo, told the BBC the problem was being blown out of proportion on social media. She refuted the suggestion that many crimes go unreported through a lack of public confidence in the police.
“In my 30 years as a judge and magistrate, I don’t think that the Cuban people lack confidence in their authorities,” she claimed, speaking inside the ornate Supreme Court building.
“In Cuba, the police have a high success rate in solving crimes. We don’t see people taking the law into their own hands – which happens in other parts of Latin America and elsewhere – which suggests the population trusts in the Cuban justice system,” she argued.
Again, though, that wasn’t the experience of another recent victim of opportunistic theft on Havana’s dimly lit streets.
Shyra is a transgender activist who is used to speaking out about rights in Cuba. She says that her story, of being robbed by a man brandishing a knife one evening, is common.
But it was the police response which disillusioned her the most.
“Just after I was attacked, I came across two motorcycle police in a side street,” Shyra recalls. Despite her obvious distress, the police ignored her pleas for help, she says.
“They openly told me: ‘We’re not here for stuff like that.’ It was such a shocking thing to hear because I told them where they could find the attacker, showed them which direction he was headed in, what he was wearing. But they just didn’t pay me any attention.”
In the small apartment she shares with her mother, Samantha González watches videos of her younger brother’s wake. A crowd of Jan Franco’s friends appeared outside his home and began singing the songs which he’d produced before his fledgling music career was cut short.
As his coffin was loaded onto the hearse, the mourners fell silent, except for the soft murmur of weeping and prayer.
Buried with him, and every young victim of violence on the island, is another piece of Cuba’s claim to be the world’s safest nation.
Bloomberg, September 24th, 2024
Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua Are Black Holes the United Nations Can’t Ignore
Latin America isn’t immune to the wave of repression washing over the world, with increasingly nasty consequences that its healthy democracies and northern neighbors can’t afford to ignore.
Just days ago, a Cuban magazine called AM:PM was forced to shut down, its management denouncing the “increasing pressure and harassment” of the country’s counterintelligence agencies. But AM:PM wasn’t in the business of uncovering political scandals or reporting on the communist island’s crumbling economy; it focused on celebrating Cuban music.
That secret police now torment those who give voice to one of the richest regional rhythms solely because they were receiving international financing is yet one more example of the extremes to which the region’s autocratic regimes are going in their relentless crackdown on dissent.
Latin America has hardly been immune to the wave of repression washing over the world, which has steadily eroded political rights and civil liberties for the last two decades. Witness the criminal tragedy of Venezuela, once Latin America’s wealthiest country and now a breeder reactor of criminality, repression and despair. Despite the indisputable victory of the opposition in the July 28 election, the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro and his cronies is doing all it can to retain power, including crimes against humanity and subverting the state’s institutions to lock up political opponents. As a result, Venezuela is joining Cuba and Nicaragua in the region’s club of autocrats.
In Latin America’s firmament, these three countries now represent the equivalent of political blackholes whose collapse has unleashed malignant forces on their citizens, their neighbors and the larger world. Their authoritarian governments have been able to resist sanctions and international pressures while at the same time consolidating their repressive tactics, emboldened by the lack of effective pushback. Their populations are trapped, their civil societies effectively dismantled; even those once allied with the regimes are under the threat of being purged, imprisoned or exiled. Few can visit these nations, not just because flight connections are now few and far between, but for fear of detention, because the regime arbitrarily bars entrance; families remain split or forced to meet abroad to avoid harassment. Their top diplomatic relations are limited to like-minded autocracies — mainly China and Russia — from which they get financial and military aid while exploiting every loophole in the international system to contain their economic decay. Their increasingly violent methods reduce hope for any form of peaceful political transition and have made cooperation with former allies increasingly risky and unsavory.
For its size, historic influence in the oil market and ascendancy over the socialist movement, Venezuela represents the most challenging of these black holes. But none of these three countries became what they are overnight: They benefited from the region’s failure to tackle these threats early on. There were also political and business complicities: Latin America has a long tradition of minding its own business which, combined with ineffective integration efforts, ideological affinities, and the vestigial resentment of the US presence, has neutered any capacity to contain these threats locally.
Even if we are now left without easy solutions, it’s still crucial to understand how deeply damaging these autocracies are for their neighbors and how important it is for Latin America to defend democratic values. From uncontrolled migration to emboldened organized crime that worsens insecurity or the risk of becoming a pawn in the competition among great powers, the region — as well as the US — has much to lose from the unchecked expansion of authoritarian regimes.
Nicaragua, one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships, is a case in point. The Daniel Ortega-Rosario Murillo government has crushed all political opposition, the independent press, and every segment of free public life by removing legal status and confiscating the assets of thousands of organizations, from the Jesuit order to the country’s Scout Association.
The cost to neighbors of this authoritarianism is palpable even in quotidian matters: Nicaragua’s dissolution of local agriculture chambers and unions, for instance, has weakened the fight against a damaging cattle pest that’s spreading in Central and North America. The weaponizing of migration as a way of generating financial gains and the exploiting of global money laundering rules to go after dissidents bring other more onerous consequences. There is also the risk of a growing foreign military presence, particularly that of Russia.
As tempting as it is for Latin American and Washington diplomatic circles to see these autocracies as unsolvable problems that should be left alone or, worse, to expect that their solution will only arrive once things hit rock bottom, that would be a big mistake. We need only to look at Haiti’s current situation to realize that political instability can always worsen. The region will bear the negative externalities of this decomposition, including greater instability and insecurity, for decades to come. To believe that such situations are somehow going to fix themselves without external intervention is wishful thinking in its most toxic and self-destructive form.
Uncontrolled migration flows are probably the most visible — and controversial — of these externalities. According to some estimates, about 18% of Cuba’s population has left the country in the last two years. Millions of impoverished Cubans, mostly in their prime working-age but also children and elders, are wandering streets from Mérida, in Yucatán, to Miami, seeking an opportunity to escape misery and oppression.
Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, stresses that tackling democratic deterioration in other Latin American nations early on is crucial to avoid reaching “inflection points” when a potential autocrat manage to capture the state’s institutions:
“The so-called democratic decline or backsliding highlights the political setbacks in many countries and serves as a warning of how close we are to living in a world run by dictators. Civic groups in El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Paraguay, among others, need to triple their efforts to unite on a democratic political pact, otherwise the dictatorial wave will consume them as it has happened in Nicaragua and Venezuela.”
In forthcoming research to be published next month, Orozco offers seven policy recommendations to deter dictators, from using soft power against disinformation to empower and strengthen oppositions. He also proposes penalizing Nicaragua for its lack of compliance with the Central American Free Trade Agreement and pushing the legal pathway against Ortega and Maduro under the Convention Against Torture and the Inter-American Human Rights Court. The diaspora of these nations, mainly in the US, needs to be embraced as key stakeholders for any possible transition, he argues.
Such recommendations deserve even wider consideration in light of the capricious dismantling of Mexico’s justice system, the meetings with narco-traffickers by family members of Honduras’s president, and other worrying regional signs of democratic backsliding. If Latin America can learn one lesson from Venezuela’s current catastrophe, it’s that its seeds were sown in open daylight.
But above all, it’s crucial to let the oppressed people of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela know they have not been abandoned to a malign destiny, and that the democratic countries of the region will continue combating the dangers these regimes pose. In a week when most Latin American leaders are in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, the situation of these countries should be in everyone’s meetings and speeches. If we want democracy to flourish again in the continent, we need to speak up loudly, with one voice, against the perils of autocracy.
From the archives
Robbery apparent motive in 5 killings
By Tim Johnson And Elaine de Valle. edevalle@herald.com.
Published Wednesday, December 19, 2001 in the Miami Herald
A Hialeah Gardens couple was buried in Cuba Tuesday, one day after their bodies were found along with those of their daughter, an 8-year-old grandson and a family friend in what appeared to be a rare and gruesome roadside robbery.
Family members identified the Florida residents as Ada Lorenzo, 52, and Celedonio Placencia, 60, who were assaulted late Sunday or early Monday as they traveled from Havana to their family’s home in Santa Clara.
The three other victims lived on the island: one of the couple’s twin daughters, 28-year-old Yailén Placencia; their grandson Daniel Osmani Placencia Pérez; and Domingo Delgado, a family friend who picked them up at José Martí International Airport in Havana.
The couple had flown to Cuba on Sunday to visit Celedonio Placencia’s gravely ill mother, family members said. Their bodies were found along a stretch of the Ocho Vias highway near Matanzas. Relatives in Florida said they were shot and stabbed and that the couple’s daughter had her throat slit.
“They opened fire on them and then, so that there would be no survivors, they savagely stabbed them,” said Osmiel Vera, who is married to the couple’s surviving twin daughter, Yisel, and lived with them in Hialeah Gardens. Vera came to South Florida with the Placencias — including a son named Osmani — in 1995. Osmani Placencia is the father of the dead boy, whose mother lives in Cuba.
“The boy had wounds in his hands as if he was trying to defend himself,” Vera said. “This is a horror without a name. They were killed like dogs.”
The couple had fled to South Florida on a raft in 1995. They spent several months at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo before being admitted to the United States.
They flew out of Miami International Airport to Havana on Sunday, according to relatives. When they hadn’t arrived in Santa Clara to visit the ailing relative by early Monday, family members and friends searched the highway and found the bodies.
Cuba’s official media reported nothing about the massacre, and there was no comment Tuesday from official government spokesmen. But several government sources privately confirmed the five were slain in an apparent robbery attempt. A woman reached at the morgue in Matanzas, who refused to give her name, said the victims had been shot.
‘SERIOUS CRIME’
Cuban police said only that a “serious crime” had been committed and was under investigation. “They were found on the road near the car,” said one officer.
Few details were available from authorities late Tuesday.
But Vera, the couple’s son-in-law, said relatives on the island told him the couple’s luggage and jewelry, as well as medicines they were taking for relatives, were missing.
Violent crime is rare in Cuba, where only police and military officers are allowed to carry guns. But — as with most things — people can obtain them through the black market.
Experts on Cuba expressed shock at the news.
“Having five people killed all at the same time is very, very unusual for Cuba. I’ve never heard of it,” said Gillian Gunn Clissold, director of the Caribbean Project at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Another Cuba expert, Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations based in Washington, agreed: “[Cuba] remains one of the safest places in Latin America.”
Still, there have been several notable tourist murders in recent years:
In May, an American priest was strangled in his home in central Havana, a month after he returned to Cuba to help the poor. The Rev. George Zirwas, 47, originally from McDonald, Pa., near Pittsburgh, was found by a neighbor. A State Department official said his apartment was ransacked.
In January 1999, two Cubans were sentenced to death for the September 1998 murder of two Italian tourists. A foreign press agency said the two Cubans also confessed to killing a German tourist in November 1997 and a Canadian of Iranian descent in August 1998.
In November 1999, Claudia von Weiss de Venegas, a German married to a Bolivian with business ties in Cuba, disappeared from the Playa Giron area. She is still missing.
It is impossible to know for certain if there are more cases, said Cuba experts who note that the island rarely publicizes such crimes.
“In Cuba, crime does not make the news,” said Juan Carlos Espinosa, who directs St. Thomas University’s Felix Varela Center for Cuban Studies in Miami. “It has to be really horrific for Cubans on the island to find out. On Cuban TV, you don’t see stories about crime like we see here in the American media.”
Without readily available statistics, Espinosa said there is some anecdotal evidence that shows a definite rise in nonviolent crime.
“The increase in robbery and property crime is quite pervasive, and I think you can make the assumption that it’s based on the economic situation in Cuba. What stands out in this case is the violence.”
Osmani Placencia, the couple’s son, has his own theory on the slayings. “The police are either involved or they know something. The were shot with rifles. Only police have guns in Cuba,” he said.
Espinosa and other experts, however, expect authorities on the island to move quickly to solve the murders to keep from losing more tourism dollars. “The last thing they need is for people from Miami to cancel their trips,” Espinosa said.
Foreign visitors, including Cuban exiles, bring valuable dollars to the Cuban economy. About 1.8 million tourists visited Cuba last year. The Fidel Castro government hoped to bring two million tourists this year, projecting tourist revenues at $2.2 billion.
TOURISM DECLINE
The killings come as Cuba struggles to recover from a 25 percent decrease in tourism magnified by the post-Sept. 11 drop in international travel and Hurricane Michelle.
Sweig noted that the vicinity of the attack was devastated by the storm, which tore across Cuba Nov. 4, damaging tens of thousands of homes and ruining crops.
Countries where large numbers of residents travel to Cuba generally counsel visitors to be alert to crime.
“There are no serious security or safety concerns,” according to the travel report on Cuba issued Monday by the Canadian government. “However, Canadians have been victims of pickpocketing, theft, assault and rape. Exercise caution at all times, even in tourist areas.”
Yisel Placencia, the surviving twin, put it more plainly Tuesday night: “There is no security for anything in Cuba.”
Her husband had a warning. “We know that tomorrow and the day after, more people are going to travel to Cuba,” Vera said. “Be careful that they don’t kill you, too.”
Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report, which was supplemented with Herald wire services.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald
https://web.archive.org/web/20020219185909/https://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/dec01/19e3.htm