State Security suggests she cooperate with counterintelligence or go live with her sister in the US
14ymedio, Madrid, April 14, 2026 / The Havana Provincial Prosecutor’s Office has definitively dismissed the case against Cuban YouTuber and activist Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente and her mother, Caridad Silvente, who were being investigated for crimes of “acts against personal and family privacy, image and voice, identity of another person and their data.” The decision means the lifting of the precautionary measures imposed on both women, such as the travel ban between provinces and abroad.
While the measure is good news, it has a downside, as it represents an “exit” from the harassment the young woman has been subjected to by State Security in recent weeks. “They really gave me three options,” said Anna Bensi—as she is known on social media. “Shut up, reunite with my sister (and my mother), or regret spending my youth locked up in a prison,” she explained in a Facebook Live video.
The 21-year-old activist was summoned to the Alamar police station on Monday, where she was informed that the case against her had been dismissed. However, this was only the beginning of a long conversation that outraged the young woman. After signing the documents, she was asked to stay for a moment to chat, and then “three counterintelligence agents entered who never identified themselves” and sat down, surrounding her, one on each side and one facing her.
“Three counterintelligence agents entered who never identified themselves” and sat down surrounding her, on both sides and facing her.
The agents tried to convince her they could help her in the music industry. “’Sofia, that dream is in your hands. It only depends on you, we can help you,’ they said, and with that they were trying to recruit me into silence,” she asserts. Anna Bensi argues that these offers will not lead her to abandon her ideals and contribute to “maintaining their circus while a people is dying of hunger.”
“There they were, playing with my psychology. Making me believe they were friendly and they wanted to help me, because that’s how they work. Asking me how I felt about the whole situation, how I felt about what I was going through, what I wanted, how I saw myself in the future…,” she continues.
The agents told her, she maintains, that no one else had the power to help her in any way like they could, and they gave her the names of activists and journalists in the US and Spain—including José Daniel Ferrer, Amelia Calzadilla, and Mario J. Pentón—as examples of those who couldn’t get her a visa. Furthermore, they insisted that she shouldn’t let herself be manipulated and subtly threatened her, saying that something could happen to her if she continued to lead a cause against the regime.
“They said it was in our best interest to keep quiet, that any little thing could happen to us, that I was very skinny and very young to be a leader. I don’t want to be a leader of anything, I simply share my opinion on social media,” she emphasized at several points in the nearly 22-minute video.
These last three weeks have not been easy, the young woman says, stating that the authorities have targeted everyone around her, not just her.
In early March, Caridad Silvente, Anna Bensi’s mother, recorded and shared images of the agent who came to her house to deliver a summons for her daughter, whom they wanted to interrogate for disseminating messages denouncing the situation in Cuba and attributing the hardships of the population primarily to the regime. These types of activities, which amount to little more than criticism of the government, are considered “propaganda against the constitutional order” under the Cuban Penal Code and are punishable by long prison sentences, with online dissemination being an aggravating factor .
The YouTuber went to testify weeks later regarding the accusation against her mother, but ended up being charged with the same crime. In early April, the US chargé d’affaires in Cuba, Mike Hammer, visited their home in Havana in a show of support. The pressure on her family intensified just hours after the meeting, and her sister, Elmis Rivero Silvente, was summoned to the Immigration Unit in the Playa municipality under the pretext of an “interview for immigration control of her stay.” Rivero is a US citizen and was spending a few days with the family on a trip she used to bring medicine for her mother, but she became caught up in the persecution against her family.
Despite the ordeal of the last few days, the activist is clearer than ever: “All these injustices only demonstrate what they so vehemently deny being: a dictatorship. If they think they can silence me, they are very wrong, unless they imprison me.”
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