14ymedio, Havana, 18 January 2024 — The drip drip drip of murders does not stop in Cuba. This Thursday the news of the death of Walter Mulgado, 51, became known; he was attacked with machetes in Havana to steal his electric motorcycle. His stepdaughter, Claudia Estrada, has questioned, through her Facebook account, the insecurity on the Island: “How long will this violence last?”
Mulgado, a resident of the El Rocío neighborhood, near Expocuba in Calabazar, was attacked on January 13, but the news just became known. “He was brutally murdered all to take away his electric motorcycle, a piece of plastic as they say,” Estrada wrote online, demanding justice and that “they find those who took the life of this great human being, this excellent man.”
This January is especially bloody in Cuba, with the femicide of at least five women in just two weeks, and the discovery this Wednesday of the lifeless body of Yorjelguis Bolaños Fernández, a Cuban resident in the United States who was visiting the island. He disappeared on January 7 in Madruga, in the province of Mayabeque. The motive for the crime appears to have been the theft of the money he was carrying and his vehicle.
“He was brutally murdered all to take away his electric motorcycle, a piece of plastic as they say”
At the end of last year, the disappearance of a young man in Mayarí, Holguín province, mobilized his neighbors and family. Eugenio García, 25 years old, had left his house carrying 1,300,000 pesos with him planning to buy foreign currency in the informal market. On December 28, García’s body was found with obvious signs of violence.
Insecurity has spread throughout the island and Cubans demand greater efficiency from the police after reports of disappearances or reports of domestic violence. Pressure is also growing to toughen laws against murderers and other violent criminals.
At the moment, there is no official information regarding Mulgado’s case, but the murder is reminiscent of that of teacher Santiago Morgado, who was assaulted in Sancti Spíritus in July 2022. The teacher was the victim of a robbery with violence and ended up dead after being beaten with a stick and a stone. His body was found in a well three meters deep when his attackers, who ten months later would be sentenced to life imprisonment, had already sold the motorcycle they took from him for 200,000 pesos.
The independent press reported from the beginning the disappearance and death of Morgado, which was only reported in detail by the official media when the murderers were already in prison.
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