Marieta Pérez Alfaro, mother of the Cuban comedian Eddy Ceballos —known on social media as "Despingovery"—, publicly raised her voice this Wednesday to demand the release of her son exactly one month after his arrest.
"I am a mother who raises her voice for her son. Regardless of my pain and fatigue, I will continue to speak for him," Pérez Alfaro stated in a video shared on social media, where she also summarized the timeline of harassment that preceded the arrest.
Ceballos was arrested on June 1, 2026 in the Diez de Octubre municipality, Havana, one day after the head of a military unit presented a formal accusation against him.
The trigger was a video published on May 24 on his channel Despingovery Channel, where he explored an abandoned military facility containing Soviet missiles from the 1960s, radars, and Cold War bunkers in an advanced state of decay.
According to her mother, the arrest was not an isolated incident but the culmination of a process of systematic intimidation. There were three prior summonses: the first one, which had the wrong address, was disregarded; the second, in April, led him to Villa Marista, where agents warned him that he needed to "stop that content or they could fabricate a case against him, said exactly like that"; the third accused him of attempting to defraud a tourist with a photograph that wasn't even his, and that also did not come to anything.
Las acusaciones iniciales de «invasión de propiedad militar» fueron desestimadas porque ese cargo no existe en el Código Penal cubano, según señalaron la organización jurídica Cubalex y el abogado Alain Santana.
The Military Prosecutor's Office then reclassified the case under Article 116, Section 3: "revelation of secrets concerning State Security," a crime that carries penalties of 10 to 30 years, life imprisonment, or death.
Pérez Alfaro questioned the very foundation of the accusation: "This military area has been deactivated since 2025. It has no perimeter markings, no signs. Children regularly play there." He further pointed out that on May 25 and 26—days after the video of his son—other individuals posted photos of the tunnels from that very facility on Instagram without being prompted by the authorities.
On June 5, Ceballos was transferred to the High Security Combined Penitentiary of the East. On June 17, his mother reported that he was physically assaulted while being held, describing the prison as "the waiting room of hell."
Cristian, the cameraman who worked with Ceballos that day, was also detained, and the authorities seized the clothes he was wearing during the filming as part of the new evidence they are trying to gather against him.
The mother also revealed a pattern of intimidation that extends beyond her son's case.
The content creator Andy García Lorenzo was summoned and required to sign a warning letter regarding the risks of filming military installations; during that meeting, the authorities explicitly mentioned the case of Ceballos and the possible sentence of up to 30 years.
Ceballos' colleagues at the Humor Promotion Center —where he has been working since 2019— have remained publicly silent. His mother explained the reason: "They were advised to refrain from making comments on social media."
"In all these matters, I see a pattern of intimidation and harassment," concluded Pérez Alfaro in his statement. As of the end of this Wednesday, the Prosecutor's Office had not completed the investigation nor referred the case to a court.
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