Díaz-Canel's cheap bravado: cornering a 21-year-old young woman until she cries

Eleven hours. That is the time that the Cuban dictatorship devoted to trying to break a 21-year-old girl. Eleven hours of detainment against Anna Bensi at the Alamar station, when the regime's own law sets a limit of two. To make matters worse, the citation had errors. They don't even bother to pretend legality. Why should they, when power answers to no one?

She left crying. She hugged her friends and broke down in tears. And that image —a defenseless, exhausted young woman, broken after almost half a day of being locked up— is precisely what the regime wants. Not necessarily the prison. The fear. The message that anyone who speaks up can have their day, week, or life ruined.

What reveals this dictatorship the most is not only its cruelty, but who it chooses to execute it. Three Counterintelligence agents. The entire MININT apparatus. All that machinery focused on a girl who uploads videos to social media expressing her thoughts. And on her mother. And on her sister. And, as she herself reported, on "everyone who approaches her."

That is not strength. It is the logic of the bully, who always chooses his victim wisely. The one who feels brave by threatening a young woman until she cries is exactly the same as the one who cowers before anyone who might stand up to him. The bravado of the regime is always directed downwards, towards the weakest, towards those who have no courts, no official press, nor any means to defend themselves.

And here is what truly exposes this episode. This excess does not speak of power: it speaks of fear. Fear of the voice it cannot control, the one that multiplies on every social media platform, the one that cries upon leaving the station but returns to record again the next day.

Because that's the detail the regime doesn't account for. Bensi left in tears, yes. But she left, and she spoke again. And every hour they held her, every agent they sent, every threat they whispered to her just confirms what we all already know: they are afraid of a 21-year-old girl. And they are right to be.