The Cuban activist Amelia Calzadilla, exiled in Madrid, reported this Saturday that the Cuban State Security summoned her parents—elderly and ill—for questioning, which she describes as a direct reprisals against her activism from abroad.
The complaint was made on July 11, the fifth anniversary of the 11J protests of 2021, the largest popular mobilizations in Cuba in decades. Calzadilla took advantage of the date to also publish an opinion piece in which he stated: "Five years after the 11J, the dictatorship continues, but Cuba is no longer the same."
"They are going to interrogate two sick elderly people," the activist reported while disclosing the summons, highlighting the regime's tactic of using vulnerable family members as a means of pressure against those who criticize it from exile.
"Call things by their name and say that they are going to interrogate two sick elderly people in an attempt to coerce their daughter, who is denouncing from abroad and will not stop denouncing the precarious situation that my country is living," he elaborated.
The activist held "State Security, the intelligence agency, the Cuban dictatorship, and the Communist Party responsible for anything that may happen to my parents."
"I will not allow anyone to intimidate me, threaten me, or silence me by using my family," he said.
Calzadilla is not new to this type of harassment. Since she left Cuba at the end of 2023 — after experiencing police summonses and the detention of her husband, Antonio Díaz — State Security has maintained constant pressure on her family on the island.
In February 2025, the activist reported a smear campaign orchestrated by the regime to discredit and silence her. Months later, in April of that same year, she revealed details of a meeting with her mother in Cuba, amidst that same family pressure dynamic.
In the face of every attack, her response has been the same: "I will not be silenced."
Calzadilla gained public notoriety for his live broadcasts on social media, where he denounced the gas crisis, corruption, and the lack of freedoms in Cuba. That visibility cost him direct reprisals before leaving the country, including a summons from the municipal government of Cerro in Havana.
From Spain, where she resides with her three children, she has continued her activism. In May 2026, she founded the Cuban Classical Liberal Party in Madrid and is a member of the organization Citizenship and Freedom, established in 2023 to promote civil and political rights on the island.
The strategy of pressuring exiled activists through their family members in Cuba is a documented practice of State Security. A similar case occurred on March 13, 2026, when the mother of activist Anna Bensi was summoned to the Alamar police unit under similar circumstances.
Activists from the group Fuera de la Caja, interrogated by State Security on July 2, 2026, precisely described the aim of these actions: "The goal is to silence us, to intimidate us."
Calzadilla, who defines her political stance with a powerful phrase—"My political stance is to be a mother"—emphasizes that her activism did not arise from an oppositional vocation, but from the need to "uncover problems that we have been dragging for seven decades of dictatorship."
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