Rapper Nando OBDC was sentenced for painting “counter-revolutionary phrases” such as “Cuba First in the streets for human rights” on a sheet.
14ymedio, Havana, 19 January 2025 — Rapper Fernando Almenares Rivera, known as Nando OBDC, was utimately sentenced to five years in prison for the “intentional and consummated crime of propaganda against the constitutional order, as a direct perpetrator.” This is stated in the sentence that has just been delivered to his mother, Eva Rivera, and which 14ymedio has had access to.
Signed in Havana on December 22 by the judges of the State Security Crimes Chamber Kenia Reyes Lara –the rapporteur– Jesús Pérez Benavides, Patricia González Vera, Gil Amado Payne Hernández and Simón Mario Reyes Balmaceda, the sentence reduces by one year the prosecutor’s request for prison – which was six years – but retains the same Orwellian tone in the account of the “proven facts.”
Thus, it is taken as fact that Almenares received “instructions” from the Cuban-American Armando Labrador Coro, “an active member and president of the counterrevolutionary organization called Cuba Primero” – to which Daniel Alfaro Frías José Antonio Pompa López and Lázaro Mendoza Garcías belong, who were sentenced to nine, eight and five years in prison, respectively, last October – with which “he maintains relations and contacts through its members, on a date not specified but prior to and close to the month of August 2024.”
The confirmation that he was the author, in the legal document, borders on graphology
According to the judges of the People’s Court, this organization instigated the rapper to paint “counterrevolutionary phrases on pieces of white fabric and place them where they could be seen by passersby, with the purpose of provoking social unrest, disturbing public peace, and creating discontent among the population, thereby stimulating actions against the established social order in the country.” The ruling states that they paid Nando OBDC $200 for this purpose.
The phrases, painted “with a pinkish substance,” read “Cuba First in the streets for human rights,” “We want change now, Cuba First,” and “Cuba First in the streets.” The confirmation that he was the author, in the legal document, borders on graphology.
According to the “forensic document examination report,” the sentence states, as in that comic scene by the Marx Brothers, “it is concluded that the handwritten texts were made by the accused, given the degree of elaboration, the leftward inclination, the form of the mixed movements, and, in particular, the ascending and descending disproportion of the lower strokes of the capital letter A, the location of the middle stroke with respect to the baseline of the writing of the capital letter A, the situation of the middle stroke of the capital letter B with respect to the baseline of the writing, the ascending rightward inclination of the semi-oval of the capital letter P, the straight upper stroke of the capital letter R, as well as the arched shape located in the final stroke of the capital letter R.”
However, although the judges state that it was verified that Almenares was at the Bar Feline event on the date the incident allegedly occurred, the owners of the establishment and the organizers, according to the same text, “do not remember him there because many people were present.” The court deemed this “irrelevant,” explaining in a convoluted manner that “during the oral proceedings, as is his right, he stated that he was on a ship at that time, which demonstrates his intention to evade justice.”
“They also got all the details wrong, his age, his parents’ names.”
Almenares’ mother is particularly bothered by this last point, although she insists that “everything in the document is a lie.” She continues, displeased: “They also got all the details wrong—his age, his parents’ names.”
Among the evidence considered by the judges was the record of the young man’s cell phone, through which “his link with the Cuban-American counterrevolutionary Armando Labrador Coro could be determined,” and the testimony of “witness Roberto Manuel Escalona, who stated in the oral trial that he brought money from abroad to the accused without knowing the senders, but that the last time he gave him the sum of 200 USD, an amount that coincidentally is equal to that promised by Armando Labrador to the accused if he carried out the acts for which he is being tried.”
Similarly, the sentence links Almenares to “different counterrevolutionary groups” such as the independent media outlets Radio Martí and Diario de Cuba, as well as the Cuban Youth Dialogue Table, Cubalex and Cuban Democratic Directorate.
Another issue considered by the court is that they did not find a “recognized employment relationship” and that “he maintains an unfavorable social conduct by associating himself with criminal elements in the locality and with elements disaffected from the revolutionary process based both in Cuba and abroad,” although they exempt him from criminal records.
The court condemns him for painting on those sheets, based on the strict Constitution, “taking into account the degree of social harm of the act committed by the accused”
However, the court condemns him for painting on those sheets, based on the strict Constitution, “considering the degree of social harm of the act committed by the accused, due to the consequences it would bring to the economic and social stability of the country and the peace of the members of society, by putting up posters in public with a clear message that the inhabitants should oppose the Cuban social process and take to the streets, which would provoke protests, violence and a rupture of the natural state of tranquility and citizen security that characterizes our country.”
The actions of Almenares Riveras, they continue, “are in total opposition to what is established in Article 1 of the Supreme Law which states ‘Cuba is a socialist and social justice state, democratic, independent and sovereign, organized with all and for the good of all as a unitary and indivisible republic, founded on the work, dignity, humanism and ethics of its citizens for the enjoyment of freedom, equity, equality, solidarity, well-being and individual and collective prosperity’.”
The sentence does not specify in which prison he will serve his time, but until now the rapper was in the Cuba Panamá prison, located in Güines, Mayabeque, which houses inmates with HIV/AIDS. His mother has publicly denounced his continued confinement there, given that he does not have the disease, as well as the deplorable sanitary conditions of the prison.
At the end of July, Nando OBDC went on a hunger strike to protest being held incommunicado in prison. The musician’s activism had been under scrutiny by the authorities for some time. In November 2021, he was summoned to the Seventh Unit of the National Revolutionary Police for his social media posts.
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