The independent journalist and activist Ángel Cuza Alfonso was arrested this Thursday by agents of the Cuban State Security while he was with his young daughter at the corner of his house, according to a report shared on Facebook by activist Keilylli De La Mora Valle.
According to the video, the agents arrived in a vehicle and took Cuza into custody. During the arrest, there was a physical struggle, and the girl managed to grab one of the agents while trying to defend her father.
"Ángel Cuza has just been taken into custody. He was at the corner, having stepped out to the corner of Novena with his daughter, and a gray Geely just took him away. They even hit him. The girl grabbed the State Security officer," De La Mora Valle reported during his broadcast.
The activist pointed out that the detention occurs within the context of a repressive wave ahead of May 1, during which the regime is reportedly preemptively arresting activists and independent journalists throughout Cuba.
Cuza, a collaborator of the independent outlet CubaNet, has one of the most documented records of repression among Cuban journalists. The regime released him on May 3, 2025 after serving a sentence of one year and six months for "public disorder," imposed by the People's Municipal Court of Centro Havana in November 2023.
Just weeks after that release, on July 25, 2025, he was arrested again. The agents used an old bullet that Cuza kept as a charm as a pretext, accusing him of "illegal possession of weapons" and crimes against state security. In January 2026, he was transferred between various prisons before being released from Guanajay prison on January 26, only to be detained again the next day at a police unit in the Playa municipality.
His first documented arrest occurred on April 30, 2021 —exactly five years before this new arrest— when State Security arrested him on Obispo Street during a peaceful protest in support of the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. In December 2022, he was arrested while waiting in line to buy chicken at a store in Old Havana.
At the time of one of his previous releases, a State Security officer warned him bluntly: "At the slightest thing you do, you'll return to the same bed you leave behind."
The detention on Thursday is part of a systematic pattern of the regime to carry out preventive arrests on the eve of politically sensitive dates. The Cuban regime intensified its repressive practices in the weeks leading up to May 1, while simultaneously launching a political loyalty signature campaign aimed at demonstrating “mass support for the Revolution” ahead of the official parades.
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