The young Cuban Arianni Céspedes (January 7, 1989) was murdered this Saturday in her home in the Alejo neighborhood, in the town of Aguacate, Palma Soriano municipality, in Santiago de Cuba. Sources close to the victim have assured CiberCuba that she was stabbed by her ex-partner in her home, where she remains at the time of publishing this news, awaiting the arrival of forensic and criminalistics authorities.

Mother of three underage children, Arianni Céspedes was found in her home by some small children who witnessed the scene and ran to ask for help, but by the time the neighbors arrived, it was already too late for her, although not for stopping the murderer, who tried to flee but was intercepted by the deceased's brother, who is a police officer.

In the neighborhood, the residents of barrio Alejo are shocked because Arianni Céspedes was very well-known (and also loved) as she worked as a computer lab technician at the Manuel Polanco Mendoza secondary school in the area.

Femicide in Cuba

The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) has recognized that nearly 10,000 families and more than 16,000 women and girls are living in situations of violence in the country.

In early August, the regime reported that 110 women were killed by their partners or ex-partners in 2023, according to data from the Observatory of Cuba on Gender Equality. These are chilling figures. In Spain, with a population of 48.5 million people, 53 women were killed by their partners or ex-partners in 2023, half the number in Cuba, which has almost five times fewer people.

These numbers correspond to the cases judged in the past year and exclude victims under 15 years old, while according to the EFE agency, the femicide rate in Cuba is the sixth highest in Latin America and the Caribbean, based on the records of gender-based murders by ECLAC in 2022.