14ymedio, Havana, 9 March 9, 2023 — Nancy Peña’s is the first femicide recorded in Cuba in March. The 49-year-old woman was murdered by her ex-partner last Sunday at her home in the Alcides Pino People’s Council, in Holguín, according to CubaNet.
She herself, the independent newspaper documents, had published on social networks her fear that something would happen to her. “I feel threatened by a man,” Peña wrote on March 1, saying she wrote it “in case something happens to me,” since she had reported it to the police and the individual had not been arrested. “What a country I live in, that doesn’t care about the life of a Cuban citizen,” she lamented.
A friend of the victim told CubaNet that the killer, who used a knife and had previously assaulted Peña, waited for her son to leave the house to attack her, and that he also stabbed a neighbor who was talking to her. “Nancy was killed simply because she didn’t want to continue with him, as if he owned her, and the neighbor because he was unlucky enough to be there,” the source told the media.
So far in 2023, there have been 17 women killed at the hands of their partner, ex-partner or sexual aggressors, according to the reports on independent platforms and media, in the absence of official data.
On March 5, authorities reported the arrest of Liván Reinaldo Mora Pérez, accused of stabbing Vanelis Macola to death, on February 28, in the town of Tuinicú, in Sancti Spíritus. According to the official newspaper Escambray, the detainee had “multiple criminal offenses for the crimes of threat, injury, theft, rape, robbery with force, among others.”
At the beginning of this month, the organization Yo Sí Te Creo [Yes, I Believe You] in Cuba had identified Isabel Rodríguez Díaz as the victim of a femicide that took place on February 11 in Camagüey.
On March 8, when International Women’s Day was commemorated around the world, the group of activists who planned to hold a peaceful demonstration had to protest in silence.
The National Assembly did not accept the letter sent to them by the women, and some of them were later harassed by State Security and detained. Two initiatives did take place: wearing a black ribbon on the wrist as a sign of mourning and a “virtual March” to continue asking the Government to protect women.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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