Razones de Cuba, the digital propaganda outlet directly linked to the Cuban State Security, came out this Tuesday to refute the account of the American conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley, who claimed to have been followed and harassed by intelligence agents during his visit to Cuba on April 30th.
Shirley posted a video on social media in which he described how Cuban agents followed him from the airport, confiscated his recording equipment, and cornered him in the lobby of his hotel on the night of April 30.
"Right now we have Cuban intelligence in the hotel lobby, working to essentially trap us and potentially imprison us or prevent us from leaving Cuba," he stated from the eighth floor of his hotel in Havana. The YouTuber left the island on May 1st.
The official response came through an article from Razones de Cuba, which described Shirley's account as "pure anti-communist script" and stated that the YouTuber entered with a tourist visa —not a journalist visa—, conducted recordings and interviews without authorization, was summoned for a routine immigration interview, and voluntarily decided to change his flight to leave early.
"While he was concocting conspiracies in a hotel with 24/7 electricity, over 600,000 Cubans marched on May Day for peace and delivered more than 6 million signatures against the blockade," stated the platform of Cuban Counterintelligence, employing its old tactics of discrediting, defamation, and manipulation.
What Razones de Cuba never mentions in its discourse of "white-collar" repression is that the social media accounts of the platform led by Humberto Dionil López Suárez were blocked by Meta in May 2025 for violations of community standards, nor that in 2022 a network of nearly a thousand fake Cuban accounts linked to its propaganda ecosystem was dismantled.
The pattern of Razones de Cuba is well-known. The outlet has been used to attack independent journalists, publish "dossier" on executives of critical media accusing them of being "mercenaries," and criminalize opposition figures.
In April 2026, State Security took action against the so-called "Spiderman of Cuba" in a case that followed the same scheme of coordinated public discrediting with official media.
The case of Shirley is not an isolated incident regarding the treatment of journalists and foreign content creators on the island. Cuba ranks 160 out of 180 countries in the 2026 Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, the second worst in Latin America, only behind Nicaragua.
In January 2026, there were 69 arbitrary detentions of journalists, a 430% increase compared to the same month the previous year.
Shirley claimed to have traveled to Cuba to document the humanitarian crisis on the island. The context she aimed to portray is real: more than two million Cubans are in a state of emergency and there are over 96,000 surgeries pending, according to data from April 2026, while hospitals operate amidst chronic blackouts.
The video of Shirley was featured on TMZ Live on May 1 and shared by the Miami-Dade County Commissioner Roberto J. González, who described it as "real journalism."
Cuba, on the other hand, currently holds 775 political prisoners, 338 of whom were sentenced due to the protests of July 11th, 2021, serving as a backdrop for any discussion on press freedom on the island.
Nicholas Shirley, born on April 4, 2002, in the United States, is a content creator and YouTuber associated with right-wing viewpoints. He grew up in Utah and graduated in 2020 from Farmington High School.
He started his career on YouTube at the age of 16 with prank videos and vlogs, many featuring friends, along with some eye-catching stunts like crashing public events.
In 2021, he paused his activities to fulfill a religious mission in Chile, and after returning in 2023, he shifted his focus to political topics, defining himself as an independent journalist, although this self-designation has been questioned by traditional media.
His popularity has increased thanks to street interviews and political content videos, some of which are controversial. He has shown support for Donald Trump and has participated in related actions and media campaigns, in addition to indirectly collaborating with Republican politicians.
His work has been criticized for sensationalism and for amplifying anti-immigrant or Islamophobic rhetoric, while he defends his publications as legitimate reports of irregularities.
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