Exemplary trials have become a new tool of repression
14ymedio, Havana, August 31, 2024 — With a soundtrack worthy of police cinema, Cuban Television presented this week the results of an investigation that led to the arrest of 10 members of a “crime chain” in Matanzas. Aimed at warning the population and using all kinds of narrative resources, the report revolves around a kind of hero of the Ministry of the Interior: Major Yudiel Tomé, criminal investigator of the case.
In the first images, Tomé appears on his desk examining the evidence of the case: photos of several paddocks located in Colón, Los Arabos and Calimete, where the Police have already found several clues: a machete, a rope, a farmer’s boot footprint. “Those involved used weapons and exercised violence on the victims, and also slaughtered animals,” the investigator summarizes.
An officer of the Ministry takes note of what Tomé comes up with, after reviewing the files of the detainees. “But the investigation continues,” he warns. Tomé is not a great speaker and explains the case in front of the cameras with great difficulty. He warned that with the clues uncovered on the ground, the Prosecutor’s Office was asked to issue an arrest warrant against a dozen people involved. They are already in “provisional prison,” the policeman said, “according to their aggressiveness and the seriousness of the facts.”
Yulelkis Hernández, provincial prosecutor, was much more eloquent about the case and fulfilled one of the functions of these reports: their exemplary character. Hernández said that pre-trial detention was an extraordinary measure, but that the authorities had all the power in the world to apply it, especially if it was requested by the police. The key words, frequent in the official press, is “maximum severity.”
Without explaining the reasons, halfway through the report, Televisión Cubana forgets the case that Tomé is investigating and offers details of another crime: the assault by two young people in the Matanzas Viaduct. “They told us to give them all the valuable belongings we had, they took away our phone, watch, wallets,” says one of the victims, while an officer explains that they immediately “detected” the two suspects, who started running.
Hours later, the victims recognized the robbers in a group of four suspects. They were tried this week, and without revealing their faces, some images of the trial are transmitted. “You can’t lose the citizen tranquility that has been prevalent in this country for years,” Hernández says. “All people who commit these types of crimes will find a severe criminal response,” including life imprisonment.
Exemplary trials have become a new repressive tool in Cuba, although the word that Cuban Television prefers is “preventive.” On August 20, information was published about four trials held in the municipal court of Songo-La Maya, in Santiago de Cuba. The press did not reveal details about the cases, but it did underline its warning character.
“When we make exemplary judgments, we enhance communication so that the message we want to transmit reaches certain recipients,” said Geovanis Mestre, one of the judges of the provincial court of Santiago, interviewed by Sierra Maestra. It is essential, he argued, that criminals learn that the authorities have the livestock in their sights and that the punishments will be severe.
These trials were not chosen “at random,” Mestre said, but because of the “repetition” of the theft and slaughter of cattle in several areas of the country
These trials were not chosen “at random,” Mestre said, but because of the “repetition” of the theft and slaughter of cattle in several areas of the country such as Santiago and Matanzas. At a time when these crimes have been “calling the attention” of the Police, the court decided to turn them into a “behavior of priority in criminal legal confrontation.”
From the massive criminal proceedings of 1959 – not infrequently resolved with the death penalty – to the famous case of Arnaldo Ochoa in 1989, this practice has not lost its validity in Cuba. During the coronavirus pandemic, the Government also held many exemplary trials.
According to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, in June 2020 the Police carried out “at least 67 arbitrary arrests,” especially in the provinces of Havana, Santiago de Cuba and Villa Clara, and 74 “repressive actions of another type,” in particular, harassment through police summons.
These arrests were followed by a “wave of exemplary trials” to “intimidate the population affected by the country’s poor economic situation. Several of these processes have been aired by the official media, so that citizens can see how relentless the system can be,” denounced the organization, based in Spain.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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