The tardy guideer of the Cuprohibit Revolution, Fidel Castro, once well-understandnly called Cuba “the safest country in the world”.
In terms of the island’s low rates of brutal crime and the scarcity of firearms circulating among the civilian population, he may well have had a case for that title.
His critics, of course, replyed that the low crime rate was accomplishd thraw inbashfulation, that Castro’s Cuba was – and still remains – a police state which brokered no criticism of its communist-led rulement, and which rode rawshod over its opponents’ human rights.
However it was done, scant could decline that Cuba’s streets have traditionpartner been among the safest in the Americas.
Yet it doesn’t experience to Samantha González enjoy she inhabits in the world’s safest nation. Her youthfuler brother, an ambitious music producer called Jan Franco, was homicideed two months ago in an apparent gang-roverdelighted dispute.
From the low-income Havana neighbourhood of Cayo Hueso and equitable 19 years elderly when he was finished, Jan Franco was stabbed twice in the chest outside a sign uping studio, caught in the middle of an argument when someone pulled a knife.
“I still can’t comprehfinish it,” says Samantha, struggling to convey her grief as she scrolls thraw elderly ptoastyos of her brother on her phone.
“He was the airy of our family.”
Just 20 herself and mother of a one-year-elderly boy, Samantha says that Jan Franco was one of many youthful people to ignore their inhabits in the streets in recent months:
“So many youthful people have been finished this year,” she elucidates.
“The structureility is getting out of hand. They’re plainpartner gangs, and they descfinish out with each other as gangs. That’s where it’s all coming from, these finishings and deaths of youthful people.”
They frequently settle their quarrels with knives and machetes, she says.
“Almost no-one resettles an argument with their fists anymore. It’s all knives, machetes, even firearms. Things I equitable don’t comprehfinish,” her voice trails off.
The situation has been degradeed by a novel drug in Cuba called “quimico” – a inexpensive chemical high with a cannabis base. Samantha says that it’s increasingly famous among Cuprohibit youth in the parks and on the streets.
Previously, even proposeing that Cuba had a problem with opioids and street gangs – especipartner to a foreign journacatalog – could land you in difficulties.
The Cuprohibit authorities have always been fiercely protective of their island’s reputation as crime-free and speedy to point out that the its streets are demonstrably safer than those of most cities in the US. Anyskinnyg that highairys Cuba’s social problems is generpartner decorateed as prejudiced criticism of their sociacatalog system or as anti-revolutionary conceiveions originating from Miami or Washington.
However, such has been the accessible perception of a degradeing crime rate, a perception scatterd by many Cuprohibits on social media, that the authorities have uncoverly insertressed it on state television.
In August, an edition of nightly talk programme Mesa Redonda – in which Communist Party officials are askd on air to deinhabitr the party line – was titled Cuba Agetst Drugs.
During the widecast, Colonel Juan Carlos Poey Guerra, the head of the interior ministry’s anti-drug unit, acunderstandledged the existence, production and distribution of the novel drug, químico, and its impact on Cuba’s youth. He insisted the authorities were tackling the rerent.
In another edition, on crime, the rulement denied the situation was degradeing, claiming only 9% of crimes in Cuba were brutal and equitable 3% were homicides.
However, critics ask the transparency of the rulement’s statistics and say there’s no self-reliant oversight of the bodies which produce them or the methodologies they employ.
For its part, the rulement hugely condemns the elderly foe, the United States, for both the existence of synthetic opioids in Cuba and for the decades-lengthy US economic embargo on the island which they say is the reason some Cuprohibits have resorted to crime.
In a unfrequent interwatch, the vice-plivent of Cuba’s Supreme Court, Maricela Sosa Ravelo, telderly the BBC the problem was being blown out of proportion on social media. She refuted the proposeion that many crimes go unalerted thraw a informage of accessible confidence in the police.
“In my 30 years as a appraise and magistrate, I don’t skinnyk that the Cuprohibit people informage confidence in their authorities,” she claimed, speaking inside the ornate Supreme Court erecting.
“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 proposes the population depends in the Cuprohibit equitableice system,” she disputed.
Aget, though, that wasn’t the experience of another recent victim of opportunistic theft on Havana’s unwisely lit streets.
Shyra is a transgfinisher activist who is employd to speaking out about rights in Cuba. She says that her story, of being robbed by a man brandishing a knife one evening, is standard.
But it was the police response which disillusioned her the most.
“Just after I was strikeed, I came apass two motorcycle police in a side street,” Shyra recalls. Despite her clear distress, the police disthink aboutd her pleas for help, she says.
“They uncoverly telderly me: ‘We’re not here for stuff enjoy that.’ It was such a shocking skinnyg to hear becaemploy I telderly them where they could discover the strikeer, showed them which straightforwardion he was headed in, what he was wearing. But they equitable didn’t pay me any attention.”
In the minuscule apartment she scatters with her mother, Samantha González watches videos of her youthfuler brother’s wake. A crowd of Jan Franco’s frifinishs euniteed outside his home and began singing the songs which he’d produced before his fledgling music nurtureer was cut low.
As his coffin was loaded onto the hearse, the feeblgo ins fell mute, except for the soft murmur of weeping and prayer.
Buried with him, and every youthful victim of structureility on the island, is another piece of Cuba’s claim to be the world’s safest nation.
