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Two men were arrested in the city of Matanzas charged with planning to set fire to a house with people inside, as part of a settlement of scores, confirmed a source associated with the Ministry of the Interior (Minint).
The police were able to thwart the plan before it was carried out by arresting the two suspects —identified as Harold and Nivaldo— at their homes during an operation in the area of Salamanca Street, between Ayuntamiento and Santa Teresa, in the historic center of the city, according to a post on the official profile "Con Todos La Victoria."
The defendants remain in custody and will be brought before the court on the charge of attempted murder, a crime that under the Cuban Penal Code carries sentences of between six and 20 years in prison.
The note did not provide further details about the motives that led the accused to plan the crime or the evidence that allowed the case to be resolved.
However, with a rhetorical language that turns its back on reality, the publication attempts to downplay violence by presenting it as a random phenomenon: "a spark in a dry field" that "if not extinguished in time, turns into a fire that consumes everything," without acknowledging the structural causes that have triggered the current escalation of crime and delinquency in Cuba. Meanwhile, it calls to "build peace" in neighborhoods, "with small gestures that prevent anger from turning into violence."
Even though the crime was thwarted, the method planned by the perpetrators—setting fire to an occupied house as a form of retaliation—reflects the level of extreme and premeditated violence that has become increasingly frequent in the province.
Matanzas has seen several major crimes in 2026 so far. On June 12, a young man known as Adriel "Matute" was murdered inside the Pedro Pablo Rivera Cue polyclinic in Jovellanos; his two assailants fled and were captured days later in Cárdenas, about 80 kilometers from the crime scene.
On June 14, Malany, a 17-year-old girl, died in Cárdenas after being stabbed during a fight with another minor. The young woman passed away in her father's arms without an ambulance being available during a blackout.
In April, Marina Pino Martínez, 23 years old, was murdered by her ex-partner in Jagüey Grande, a case that added to the string of femicides shaking the country.
But the landscape of violence is not exclusive to Matanzas. A man was arrested in Granma accused of murdering another with a machete in the town of Barranca, in Bayamo; while in Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba, a 26-year-old identified as Jesús Alberto Martínez Fernández also lost his life in a violent incident near a bar.
In recent weeks, the authorities in Guantánamo have arrested 11 members of three gangs for nighttime assaults in central areas, where they operated hooded and armed with knives.
The Cuban Citizen Audit Observatory documented 2,833 verified crimes in Cuba during 2025, an increase of 115% compared to 2024 and 337% compared to 2023.
Matanzas was the province with the highest number of reported robberies that year, with 503 cases, the highest figure in the country, surpassing Granma, Havana, and Santiago de Cuba.
In April 2026, the non-governmental organization Cubalex recorded 135 incidents of public insecurity, including 28 murders, and insecurity rose to second place among the causes of popular protests across the island, with 185 reports compared to 85 in March.
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