“Cuba is going through the worst wave of repression in recent decades," rights groups say.

12 junio 2026

Hola y welcome back to CubaCurious.

Thanks for being here and caring about what’s happening in Cuba.

Well amigos, Cuba is still there, despite last week’s warnings from experts that a it wouldn’t last another week, that another countrywide uprising was imminent, that maybe the U.S. would march right on in.

All of that is still possible, but as far as the “end,” hasn’t it already arrived? I think average Cubans see it that way—and have been seeing it that way for a long while. They’ve been existing in a post-apocalyptic landscape, foraging for food in dumpsters, carrying buckets of water, worrying about darkness, fearing thugs and the secret police, hoarding whatever they can get their hands on, searching for missing family members hauled in after the nightly street protests.

That scenario is becoming more common. As defiance of the regime grows more Cubans are being arrested, and the arrests are becoming more violent. Detainees are also not being allowed to call their families, adding anguish to people who are already suffering profoundly. Family members say authorities are willfully denying them information about their loved ones, deliberately confusing and lying to them.

Political activists and their families are used to this abuse. But the reports I’m reading are about average Cubans unaffiliated with dissident groups. This is an entirely new ecosystem for them. And they have no network to help them navigate it.

The family of Joanis Antony Arenas Fernández, of Santo Suárez, went through this ordeal last week. They reported the 23-year-old painter and cafeteria worker missing last Friday. Joanis finally called them in the middle of one night, saying he was in the Capri police station, that the police were demanding he pay an unpaid 5000 peso fine for allegedly selling unauthorized merchandise (average monthly salary is ~ 2500 pesos). When the family got to the station officials told them Joanis had never been there. The family began searching hospitals and other police stations, but officials showed little interest and gave them confusing answers.

It turned out Joanis had been in custody the whole time at the Capri station. He came home one morning at 4 am to the family’s enormous relief.

Joanis, like so many Cubans, was trying to earn money trading and buying items he could sell at a profit. That’s a crime in Cuba, whether it’s a moldy tomato or rubber gasket.

What does it say about a government when, during so much hardship and scarcity, it uses precious resources to punish citizens for attempting to survive?

In each new story about a rookie detainee and their distraught family, I see the same flagrant disregard by authorities of basic human rights and a consistent and complete lack of decency.

Widespread and prolonged economic and social decline leave scars on the soul of a country. After almost 70 years of repressing citizens, Cuban authorities are showing theirs in their willful disrespect of these families. The message is painfully clear. They do not care about the people they claim to serve and protect.

A few very short Cuba news bits below. Please let me know what you think, and consider sharing, clicking the heart, and subscribing if you haven’t already.

Thanks for caring about Cuba with me.

Hasta la semana que viene.

Ana

Cuba News Bits

Humorist charged with espionage, to be tried in military court.

Eduardo Ceballos Pérez’s comedic video of an abandoned military site didn’t include its location, but the regime, focused on displaying its military strength, is showing no sense of humor in the case. The humorists’s mother, Marieta Pérez Alfaro, told Martí Noticias that the regime considers this a criminal case rather than a political one. Although international legal analysts and rights groups say there is no evidence that Ceballo intended to reveal military secrets, the regime is continuing its punishment of content creators who comment on the reality of life in Cuba in anyway. Ceballos gained popularity performing as the character Eddy Jones and parodying nature documentaries on his Youtube channel.

Cuba reaches a new record of 1281 known political prisoners, according to NGOs.

Prisoners Defenders and the Observatory of Cuban Human Rights both issued warnings this week about a record number of political detentions and arrests, many of them involving people with serious illnesses, minors and women, as well as new reports of torture and abuse of political prisoners. The death of Ernesto Brieva Sempé, who was arrested in connection with the protests of 11 July 2021 and died on 13 May after years of imprisonment, chronic kidney disease, malnutrition and lack of adequate medical care, is the sixth time a political prisoner has died while in the regime’s custody since 2023.

“These are not isolated cases. They are the result of a systematic policy of neglect, punishment, and dehumanization . . . The international community cannot keep looking the other way.”—Javier Larrondo, president of Prisoners Defenders.

“The Cuban regime is embolden and is increasing repression with the indifference of the European Union.”—Yaxys Cires, Director, OCDH.

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Regime denies pro-democracy historian permission to attend int’l academic conference.

Cuban historian Alina Bárbara López, elected co-president of LASA’s Cuba Section last year, said “this is the first time that the co-president of LASA’s Cuba Section is an intellectual under the regime’s repression, and it says a great deal about . . . the character of the Cuban state. Reaction to repression in Cuba has been a tension point for members of the Latin American Studies Association, with some former Cuban diplomats and regime supporters blocking efforts to support repressed Cuban academics.

Residents accuse national power company of extortion, unequal access to power grid.

Workers for the Empresa Eléctrica, Cuba’s state-run power company, told residents in a barrio in Güines that the transformer that had stopped working and left them without power for over a week was irreplaceable. But they might be able to find one if the residents could come up with 100,000 pesos. “How is it that if the state says there are no transformers but they can come up with one if we find the money?” a resident told 14ymedio.

“What we are seeing in Güines is something that we have been seeing for a long time in Cuba in general, which is the use of misery and scarcity, which is always fruitful fodder for corruption to prosper,” said José Manuel González Rubines, a researcher for the think tank, Cuba X Cuba, Martí Noticias.

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New U.S. sanctions target top leaders and their families for first time

(Sourced from Yoani Sánchez’s 5 June podcast, Cafecito Informativo.)

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday included in its list of Cuban sanctioned Cuban officials not only Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, but also his wife Liz Cuesta Peraza and her son, Manuel Anido Cuesta. Alejandro Castro Espín is also on that list . . . the son of Raúl Castro, and in turn the grandson of Raúl Castro, Raúl Alejandro Castro Cali. . .

The new list includes the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, “the para police groups on each block that monitor what we Cubans are doing” and the Institute of Friendship with Peoples, “a factory of state security that recruits people all over the world. The Ministry of the Armed Forces is also in inclusion, the new inclusion in this list. And the Mistur Travel Agency, among others.

While mostly symbolic—Cuba’s leadership has had decades to hide accounts and set up front men for the companies they run—the sanctions will make life a bit harder for these political and military elites.

Díaz Canel’s stepson, for example, “has been seen living the high life in [Madrid], that is, the capital of this European country and now everything will be more complicated, much more complicated for him.” It also tells those in the social and family circle of the party elites who have controlled Cuba with an iron fist for more than 67 years, “which is difficult to know how many people are related and linked to it, that there may be added difficulties in that association,” . . . and may diminish somewhat the international status they enjoy.

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Cuban Treat of the Week

El mar nos une (The Sea Unites Us), sung by Cuban American artists Willy Chirino and Leoni Torres, is a celebration of the ties between Cubans living in and outside of Cuba and honors the memory of Cubans who lost their lives fleeing the island by sea.

I can’t find the English lyrics, but the song is beautiful and the video helps convey the meaning.