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The arrest of the Cuban mother Mayelín Carrasco Álvarez last Thursday in Río Cauto (Granma) was not the first arrest in the Granma municipality in the past month. On February 6, 2025, the political police detained opposition figure Alexander Verdecia Rodríguez, coordinator of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) and a former political prisoner, accused of sharing posts on social media that allegedly undermine the constitutional order. He was sent directly to the provincial prison in Bayamo, known as Las Mangas.
According to José Daniel Ferrer, the leader of Unpacu, who explained to CiberCuba, the coordinator from Río Cauto is detained for making social media posts that the political police consider "counter-revolutionary" and also for attempting to travel to Santiago de Cuba to the main headquarters of Unpacu, alongside other activists from the municipality.
Not satisfied with the arrest of a married father with two young daughters, the political police also sent a summons this week to his wife, coinciding with the protests in Río Cauto and Guamo Viejo (a rural area of Río Cauto) by hundreds of residents demanding the release of Mayelín Carrasco Álvarez, who was detained for denouncing hunger and misery in Cuba from the Ángel Fría plaza in the municipality.
Alexander Verdecia's wife, Eliannis Villavicencio Jorge, was scheduled to appear this Saturday at eight in the morning at a police unit in Bayamo (about 50 kilometers away, but with no public transportation). She did not attend due to the impossibility of traveling with two minor daughters for whom she has no one to leave with in Río Cauto.
In any case, with a large portion of the municipality's residents protesting in the streets following the arrest of Mayelín Carrasco, the least of the political police's concerns regarding what they have in Río Cauto is demanding accountability from the opponent's wife.
Cuban communists found themselves in a tough spot when the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in Granma traveled to the protest in Río Cauto and tried to calm the crowd by appealing "to what the revolution has done" for the people. However, she could only mention that in 66 years they had brought electricity to the area, and with so many blackouts, this sole tangible 'achievement' is now shaky.
Eliannis Villavicencio Jorge, wife of Alexander Verdecia, has claimed on Facebook that the sector chief of Río Cauto approached her house in Viviendas Campesinas and verbally summoned her to the Provincial Police Headquarters of Granma. She has also reported that when she went to see her husband at the Las Mangas prison on February 24, a political police officer threatened her, saying that she could face the same fate as her husband if she continued to share information on social media.
The profile of Villavicencio is similar to that of Mayelín Carrasco Álvarez, who is rumored at this hour in Río Cauto to have been released, but this is information that CiberCuba has not been able to verify. A mother with young children, she suffers harassment from the political police, more focused on safeguarding the regime than on addressing drug addiction and crime on the Island. To that end, this Friday they cut off communications during the protests to prevent the contagion effect that occurred during the protests of July 11, 2021, across the country.
With around 45,000 inhabitants (2022 data), Río Cauto gained visibility in February 2024 after a local resident spotted Díaz-Canel in the municipality and showed her goosebumps to the cameras with a phrase that turned into a meme, song, and viral dance: "Yo me erizo."
A year later, the people of Río Cauto took to the streets to demand the release of Mayelín Carrasco Álvarez, a mother of three , who did not offend anyone when she stood in the town square asking where the revolution of Fidel and Raúl Castro is, because in her opinion, "everything has fallen apart."
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