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The man identified as the author of the feminicide of Mariolis López Silio, a mother of four children, turned himself in to the authorities last week in Güines, Mayabeque, after being on the run for several days, according to unofficial reports.
Mariolis, 37 years old, was murdered on April 24 in the municipality of Güines, by her ex-partner and the father of two of her four children, who fled after killing her and turned himself in to the police this Tuesday, reported Niover Licea on his Facebook page Nio reporting a crime.
The Gender Observatory of Alas Tensas (OGAT), an independent organization that maintains a subrecord of femicides in Cuba, also echoed the news on its social media platforms.
According to the information confirmed to Licea by a family source and collaborators from their platforms, Mariolis's attacker "was not captured in an operation," but rather "is said to have voluntarily surrendered to the authorities at the DTI (Technical Investigation Department) in Güines," bringing with him the firearm used in the crime, according to the sources themselves.
When reporting the feminicide on social media, family members and friends of the victim identified her aggressor as Michael Pérez Sanabria, an assertion that has not been officially confirmed.
The OGAT verified that the crime occurred in several locations within the municipality, including the victim's home and an open field known as the "Motocross Track," involving the use of a firearm and prior kidnapping. The independent platform also documented the history of violence of Mariolis's assailant and her mother, who suffers from health effects due to previous assaults.
The victim left four orphaned children: a nursing baby, a three-year-old, a twelve-year-old, and a fifteen-year-old girl. The two younger ones are children of the attacker himself.
“This killer is named Michael and today he killed my cousin Mariolis, leaving four children orphaned, two of whom are his: a nursing baby and a three-year-old boy, whom everyone adored,” wrote Teresita Rodríguez, the victim's cousin, who had also offered a reward for information about his whereabouts, on Facebook.
Until the time of writing this note, neither the authorities nor the official press have reported on the femicide or on the suspect's handover to the police, despite the fact that he was carrying a firearm.
The police in Güines also failed to respond to Mariolis's calls before the crime, a pattern of negligence that is repeated in other cases, such as that of a woman murdered in Bayamo while heading to report her attacker.
Femicides increase in 2026
The OGAT registered the case of Mariolis López Silio as the 20th femicide in Cuba so far in 2026. In the same period of 2025, there were 14 victims, representing a 42.86% increase in just one year.
April has become the most violent month of the year, with at least seven confirmed femicides. Just two days before the murder of Mariolis, in the province of Mayabeque, a double femicide claimed the lives of a mother and her young daughter: Rosalí Peña Hernández, 31 years old, and Camila, 12, were killed by the woman's partner in Batabanó.
The Cuban Penal Code of 2022 does not classify femicide as an independent crime —only as an aggravating factor— and the regime does not publish official statistics on gender-based violence.
On April 25, the Cuban Foreign Ministry stated on social media that "in Cuba, there is and will be no impunity for acts of gender-based violence," a declaration that contrasts with the 20 femicides documented in just four months and the complete lack of official data.
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