Testimony of a former military man and businessman who escaped from Cuba by boat

The retired Cuban military officer Teófilo Luis Carmenate Peña told in an interview with the channelJuan Juan Al Medio his story as an entrepreneur on the island and about the 10-year prison sentence against him for alleged violations of the legal system.

The old man, 71 years old, affirms that being a retired military man turned entrepreneur did not sit well with the high command of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, especially after his private business, a Non-Agricultural Cooperative called Pirámide, demonstrated the failure of the socialist state company. .

A native of Las Tunas and turned into one of the best surveyors on the island, he explained that Pirámide emerged in 2012, next to Tarará, as a construction business with Mexican partners and five brigades: in just three months it had a turnover of nine million pesos.

In 2017 we had a production of 734 million Cuban pesos, said Carmenate Peña, who did not deny her links with Gaesa, under the command of the late Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, and said that her dream was to repair Tarará, a place with more than 200 houses in abandonment.

In 2019 we were the largest cooperative in Cuba and the most efficient. We were working on13 provinces of the country with 48 brigades, 840 members and 500 self-employed workers who were hired in our different brigades.

Now, after several resolutions from the Cuban Ministry of Construction, Carmenate Peña was sentenced to 10 years in prison for embezzlement, something he denies.

This after a lawsuit was not made by the supposedly affected person, a Mexican businessman. The lawsuit was presented by the Cuban State, which wanted to keep the equipment that we had brought to the country for free, he denounced.

The same has happened with other Cuban businessmen and entrepreneurs, and was exemplified by the case of a Spaniard who wanted to invest in Berroa, where he had sent irrigation equipment.

After the sentence was confirmed, the soldier who was detained from leaving the country, escaped from the island in a boat.

"I have acted with decency, I am happy to be Cuban and I feel betrayed by the armed forces, by the Party, and by many people who are afraid to say what they think," he said.