Rapper Fernando Almenares Rivera, known as ‘Nando OBDC’, is another victim of the repression denounced by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights in its September report.
14ymedio, Havana, October 7, 2025 — After more than nine months in prison without trial, the mother of rapper Fernando Almenares Rivera, known as Nando OBDC, managed to obtain the formal indictment. “In the end, I had to come to court to photograph them because they were never able to send them by mail,” Eva Rivera lamented to 14ymedio, to whom she showed the document, dated June 17.
In it, the Prosecutor’s Office is requesting a six-year prison sentence for the crime of “propaganda against the constitutional order.” According to the Orwellian account of the events, at the end of August last year, Almenares wrote the words “Cuba First in the streets for human rights,” “We want changes now, Cuba First,” and “Cuba First” on pieces of sheeting “using a pinkish substance,” and then hung them “between the Combinado del Este bridge and the bridge in the town of Santa Fe, Guanabacoa municipality, Havana, a busy thoroughfare at all hours of the day, where even the capital’s public transportation buses circulate.”
For the prosecution, these are “phrases with counterrevolutionary content,” placed “in a place where they could be seen by passersby, with the purpose of causing social unrest, disturbing public peace, and creating discontent among the population. Each of these phrases also highlights the objectives pursued by an organization not legally recognized in Cuban territory, thus inciting against the social order established in the country by the Constitution of the Republic.”
These are “phrases with counterrevolutionary content,” placed “in a place where they could be seen by passersby, with the purpose of causing social unrest.”
The indictment emphasizes that the artist “maintained relations” with “members of the counterrevolutionary organization Cuba Primero” — an organization to which Daniel Alfaro Frías, José Antonio Pompa López and Lázaro Mendoza García belong, who were sentenced to nine, eight and five years in prison this week — and asserts that it was that organization, through the “Cuban-American citizen Armando Labrador Coro,”who sent Nando OBDC “the sum of 200 dollars” at the beginning of September 2024.
The formal accusation contradicts the authorities’ initial version, which justified Almenares Rivera’s arrest on December 31 of last year at his home in La Lisa as being for acts of “terrorism” related to “a fire that occurred in Lenin Park on December 30,” in which he allegedly participated.
The legal document also lists the properties confiscated from the rapper, which would constitute evidence of the crime: a “blue Samsung brand cell phone with a black case,” 545 pesos that “were deposited at the disposal of the Court at the Banco Metropolitano bank branch,” and “four pieces of sheeting with counterrevolutionary texts painted on them, which are attached to the proceedings as evidence.”
The prosecutor’s petition also states that Almenares is being held in Combinado del Este prison, although he is currently in the Cuba Panamá prison in Güines, Mayabeque, designated for HIV/AIDS patients. His mother has publicly denounced his continued incarceration there, given that he does not have the condition.
“There’s tuberculosis, bedbugs, scabies, all kinds of diseases in there, and I told Fernando not to let anyone inject him because they could give him the virus,” Eva Rivera told Martí Noticias last September. She explained that the prison warden reproached her for her son’s refusal to receive the therapy given to other inmates. “The therapy they give to those patients, who have their treatment, their medicine,” Rivera clarified, claiming to have told the warden: “Under my responsibility, I don’t allow Fernando to inject himself or take any kind of therapy, because Fernando doesn’t have any kind of illness.”
At the end of July, the rapper went on a hunger strike to protest being held incommunicado in prison.
The musician’s activism had been under scrutiny by authorities for some time. In November 2021, he was summoned to the Seventh Unit of the National Revolutionary Police for his social media posts.
Last September alone there were at least 212 repressive actions against the civilian population in Cuba, of which 39 were arbitrary arrests.
Penalties and repression against freedom of expression, in a country where citizens only demand a minimum wage, have become harsher in recent years. The Madrid-based Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) reported this Tuesday that last September alone, there were at least 212 repressive actions against the civilian population in Cuba, 39 of which were arbitrary detentions.
Most of these cases were “short-term (27)” and were related to the peaceful demonstration in Gibara (Holguín) on September 13, where residents took to the streets shouting demands such as “Electricity and food!”, “The people united will never be defeated!” and “Freedom, freedom!”.
“It has been a dark month for freedom of expression, due to convictions and trials. The regime seeks to instill terror in the face of its resounding socioeconomic failure and its inability to find solutions,” the OHCHR stated.
According to the report, in September, “the Cuban regime intensified the criminalization of freedom of expression on social media and peaceful demonstration. We learned of the sentencing of Ana Ibis Trista Padilla and Jarol Varona Agüero, which condemned them to 14 and 13 years in prison, respectively, for ‘propaganda against the constitutional order’ and ‘other acts against state security.’ And for ‘propaganda against the constitutional order,’ Félix Daniel Pérez Ruiz (five years) and Cristhian de Jesús Peña Aguilera (four years) were sentenced, all for sharing on social media a call for a peaceful demonstration that, in fact, never took place,” the observatory recalled.
Since last January, there have been 2,462 repressive actions against the population in Cuba “with the aim of preventing or limiting the exercise of civil and political rights. Of these, 461 have been arbitrary arrests.”
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