Cubans sentenced to prison for pig theft in Uruguay

Two Cubans were sentenced to prison terms of 13 and four months, respectively, byaggravated theft of pigs, in the department of Canelones, in Uruguay.

The Canelones Police Headquarters, in the South American country, reported this Saturday thata 44-year-old Cuban and another 33-year-old -whom he did not identify by name-, were sentenced to those sentences, which they will serve inprobation (supervised), for the continued crime ofrustling (livestock theft).

According to the police report cited bylocal mediaOn June 11, members of the Rural Security Brigade arrested the 44-year-old Cuban who was transporting 15 pigs in a truck, for not having the corresponding permit to transport the animals.

The pigs were taken to “a rural establishment located on Route 32, km 25, jurisdiction of Section 21 Las Piedras,” the report stated. At that location, the authorities carried out a raid andThey seized another 30 animals, in addition to arresting another 33-year-old Cuban citizen.

The statement specified that, after a judicial process, the 44-year-old man was sentenced to 13 months in prison, to be served on probation, for being the “perpetrator criminally responsible for a crime of theft especially aggravated in real repetition with a continued crime of rustling.”

Meanwhile, the other Cuban was sentenced to four months in prison, which he must also serve on supervised release, for being responsible for the crime of rustling.

The detention of the Cubans was made public last June by local media, which then reported the arrest of a third Cuban, 56 years old, who accompanied the truck driver. However, it was not announced whether he was put on trial along with his two compatriots.

Uruguay is one of thefrequent destinations of Cubans who emigrate from the island due to the economic crisis, and leave in search of better living conditions. Thousands of families have settled in that South American nation for some years.

However, in May it emerged that around10 thousand Cuban immigrants in Uruguay They could remain undocumented due to new requirements for applying for visas in the eastern country.

In April, the Uruguayan justice system summoned 92 people to a trial that threatened to evict 60 families.founders of the community known as “the Cuban neighborhood”, in the town of San José de Carrasco Norte, in a peripheral area of the City of the Coast, in the department of Canelones, 26 kilometers from Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital.

The settlement, made up of wooden houses and some block houses, was built at the initiative ofCuban migrants on land owned by a hundred people who paid a company to establish two cooperatives for the construction of homes.