The Police and State Security detected 1,644 undeclared calves and 4,463 “disappeared” animals
14ymedio, Havana, 10 August 2024 — The official press spared no detail this Saturday to describe, with the tone of a detective novel and warnings from the Ministry of the Interior, the situation of theft and slaughter of livestock in Santiago de Cuba. After numerous raids, it was discovered that in the province there are 1,644 calves whose births were not declared, 818 illegal sales of cows, 200 unmarked, 719 animals killed without notifying the authorities and 4,463 “disappeared,” whose owners did not report the loss.
The Police have released – literally – their dogs in the pastures of Santiago so that they can find the remains of slaughtered cows, and they have opened files on the farmers who violated the law, to fine them or impose any “other accessory sanction” that corresponds. In total, the authorities say that the province has 110,448 animals, whose owners have their papers in order.
Sierra Maestra interviewed an anonymous farmer – he did not want to reveal his name “for fear of becoming an enemy with some of my acquaintances” – who shed light for the agents on the most common method of Santiago farmers and their complicit “clients”: “You introduce yourself to them with a sack of pesos, and they will let you sacrifice a cow from their herd, making it look like a theft of which they had no knowledge. There are not just a few who are in that business. Here everyone has to take care of their own and is responsible for what they have.”
The police have released their dogs in the pastures of Santiago so that they can find the remains of slaughtered cows
The Ministry of the Interior wasted no time. Invoking article 410.1 of the Criminal Code – on theft – and other similar laws, the agents said that “some farmers want greater speed on the part of the agencies and their effective cooperation to catch those responsible,” and have begun several investigations on their own.
The police computers – says Sierra Maestra – began by registering the “narration” of each farmer, and immediately, “the operational guard acted.” Insisting on the efficiency that, in the opinion of the newspaper, the agents showed, the text describes that the head of each sector, the Criminalistics experts and the detectives of the Technical and Investigative Directorate were added to each case. They searched for “fingerprints, the smell of burnt palm trees, footwear and textile fibers,” and they found “possible suspects.”
In difficult cases, they used dogs, “to follow the traces of those involved” and any other evidence of slaughter on the ground. They even used – underlines Sierra Maestra – agents of State Security.
Such a deployment was necessary, the newspaper alleges, because of the economic situation that the Island is experiencing, which elevates all minor theft to the level of a major crime. It is a “national exercise” prioritized by the Government, they say, over the 16,689 ranchers in the province, visited one by one since last March.
“Since the first months of the year, the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office, in general, declared to this media that an increase in events had been generated against livestock in the territory,” says the newspaper. “There have been a high number of breaches of the provisions of the Livestock Promotion Law.”
There were “unreceptive attitudes” and “doubts about the seriousness of the task,” admits Sierra Maestra when describing that many farmers refused to collaborate with the investigation. They were punished with 496 fines that collected seven million pesos. About 787 farmers will be “analyzed” by Agriculture in the province, and another 246 received accusations for “breach of the duty to report.”
The lesson: “Respect and comply, and there will be no measures,” an Agriculture official interviewed by the newspaper says clearly.
Several farmers refused to collaborate with the investigation in which even State Security agents participated
To illustrate the moral, Sierra Maestra describes the life of the one who, in his opinion, is the perfect farmer: Hermis Isaac Ferrer, of the Gustavo Moll Credit and Services Cooperative, located in the municipality of San Luis. Ferrer “does wonders” on his Nueva Arena estate and shows that “when you want, you can” be legal.
Ferrer has organized a group of guards whom he calls the “farmer patrol,” to whom the cooperative “provided telephones to communicate in the event of any problem, fact or suspicion.” Predictably, the guards are armed with machetes, but this is not said by Ferrer, who says that when the “patrollers” detect a crime, they call the head of the sector.
But no one is perfect. “In the month of July, as part of the national livestock exercise, several cases were identified for lack of animals, or for not having enough protection for them, which facilitates their theft,” Ferrer confessed.
The farmer is also described as a charitable soul of the area: “He delivers milk to Public Health, in the nursing home, to mothers and the hospital. The big cattle are interspersed, with 10 breeders, six small females and two bulls, in addition to their horses. They collaborate with the neighbors and vice versa, and together they send productions to the market and the fairs.”
This is Ferrer’s “paradise,” concludes Sierra Maestra, free from the “lack of control and negligence” that characterize the province. His slogan, which has the obvious sympathies of the Police, is that “nothing escapes from those who watch.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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