Platforms confirm murder of Cuban mother of seven children and investigate two other possible femicides

Independent feminist platforms confirmed the death of the Cuban woman in recent hours Yusmila Mayo Ruiz, who was murdered on February 14 by her partner in her home, in the town of Omaja, in Majibacoa, Las Tunas.

Yo SíTe Creo in Cuba and the Gender Observatory of the magazine Alas Tensas (OGAT) stated that The victim - approximately 37 years old - was the mother of seven children, five of them minors.

The aforementioned platforms sent a message of condolences to relatives and friends of the deceased woman and updated the number of verified femicides so far this year.

Until February 15, the under-registration of the aforementioned sources is eight femicides and one case that requires access to police investigation.

Added to this is that They are working on two other alerts: one in the Esperanza town, in Villa Clara; and another in Becerra, in the province of Las Tunas.

Regarding the death of Yusmila Mayo, in a previous publication the official Facebook profile Claridad Tunera reported the crime - which it avoided calling feminicide - and specified that Although the aggressor initially fled, he has since been captured.

Until the closing of this note, no other details have emerged about the circumstances of the eighth feminicide verified by independent platforms in Cuba so far this year.

Cuba closed 2023 with the highest number of annual femicides since the independent organizations YoSíTe Creo en Cuba and Alas Tensas began collecting data in 2019.

Between 2019 and 2023, feminist platforms have verified a total of 207 femicides on the island, of which 88 were committed in 2023, according to the initial underreporting of the aforementioned independent organizations.

Although the initial count of feminist platforms was 88 in an update made at the beginning of 2024, they decided to include in the final review the death of the young Aniuvis de la Caridad Delgado Acosta, 27 years old, as a case of gynecobstetric femicide, which raised the figure from 88 to 89.

The underreporting of femicides in Cuba in 2023 stood at 89 femicides; nine attempted feminicides; two gender-related murders and five cases that need access to police investigation.

The cases needing access to the police investigation are the following: Yailén Bodaños Morales (Matanzas); Miriam Insern Mompié (Manzanillo, Granma); Flavia Herrera Rodríguez (Havana); Elba Yipsi Pérez Álvarez (Santiago de Cuba) and Yaidelin Figueredo, Negrita (Granma).

In the course of 2023, after years of silence, the Cuban government admitted the problem, although emphasizing that there has been no inaction from the State.

Miguel Díaz-Canel called for "zero tolerance" for sexist violence, but in July he said that in the country "any criminal act is exaggerated" and particularly those of gender violence.

In December the Government assured that the sexist murders on the island totaled 117 "at the end of October", but the criterion used was not specified.

As the year nears the end of the agency Which one indicated that the average profile of victims of sexist violence in Cuba in 2023 She was a 37-year-old woman, mother of at least one child, living in a rural area and murdered by her ex-partner.