The nighttime blackouts in Santiago de Cuba have become the ideal setting for a group of young people to bring out the cards and engage in street games for money, an illicit practice pursued by the regime for years.
The communicator Yosmany Mayeta posted on Facebook last Friday that this is the way some people have found to cope with the long and tortuous hours without electricity, dealing with heat and being besieged by mosquitoes.
According to the independent journalist, this practice "has always been the favorite entertainment of young people in all the peripheral neighborhoods throughout Cuba," warning that it has increased in the eastern city following the worsening of the economic crisis and power outages.
"It is the main dish when the blackout comes," Mayeta emphasized on social media.
A person named Ruben Salmon commented that not only cards are played, but also dice, and that the latter game has even caused fights among the players.
The deceased dictator Fidel Castro, after coming to power in January 1959, banned gambling by law, ratified in 2022 in the new Penal Code.
Article 281.1 establishes that "whoever engages in activities such as banking, collecting, recording, or promoting illicit games" shall be "sentenced to imprisonment for one to three years or a fine of 300,000 units, or both."
Likewise, the law states that if the crime "is committed by two or more persons, or using individuals under 18 years of age," the penalty will be "imprisonment from three to eight years."
In addition, the regulatory legal framework indicates among the prohibitions the casinos, cockfighting (illicit), and the lottery, or bolita, as it is also known in Cuba.
A Cuban from Puerto Padre was a victim of the regime's persecution against illegal gambling.
The man was arrested and charged with several offenses, including "illegal gambling", during a police operation where a large amount of money and fighting cocks were confiscated from him.
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