The intellectual and activist from Matanzas, Alina Bárbara López Hernández, shared the details of her fifth arrest of the year on her Facebook account this Saturday, which took place on Friday when State Security agents intercepted her while she was leaving her neighborhood in Matanzas, preventing her from reaching the Parque de la Libertad for her monthly civic protest.
She was held for almost five hours in the same meeting room at the police station where she had been detained the previous month.
"When a political regime fails to respect the strict laws it has imposed on itself; when that political regime, which presents itself to international organizations as a 'different democracy', stops bothering to pretend, it means that it is in its final throes," concluded the intellectual from Matanzas.
According to the account, he always carries a book so the hours don't feel so heavy; this time it was Morir de exilio lejos de Cuba, by the author Uva de Aragón, which served as a reflection on external exile and what she refers to as "internal exile": "those of us who live here also suffer from a kind of internal exile for too long, because, without living far from Cuba, we have been condemned to silence, prevented from participating in the shaping of its destiny."
The most revealing episode of her account was the warning given to her by a young State Security instructor — dressed in green, not blue — at the end of the detention: "that trial will take place at some point; perhaps this year or next, but in the meantime, you will be detained every time you try to speak out."
López Hernández interpreted that statement as a confession of institutional cynicism. "The goal of the delay is to save themselves the political cost of imprisoning us and to keep us in an infamous state of confinement," he wrote, adding that the regime doesn't even attempt to disguise its arbitrariness anymore: "They no longer try, and that is dangerous, but much more dangerous for them than for us."
Since June 18, 2024, the philosopher has been serving a precautionary measure of house arrest in the context of the so-called "case 40," a process she shares with the sociologist Jenny Pantoja Torres under charges of "attack."
The Prosecutor's Office requests four years of imprisonment for López Hernández and three for Pantoja. The trial, scheduled for January 30, 2026, has been postponed with no new date.
So far in 2026, the pattern has repeated every month: twelve hours detained in February alongside activist Leonardo Romero Negrín; almost ten hours in April at the Playa police unit; around ten hours in June; and in July, transferred to an undisclosed location by State Security.
The activist also connected her situation to the international context. One day before her detention, the European Parliament approved —with 374 votes in favor, 198 against, and 19 abstentions— a resolution that demands the release of Cuban political prisoners and warns of suspending the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement with Cuba if there are no advances toward multiparty democracy.
López Hernández emphasized that Europe, historically lenient towards Havana during times of heightened conflict with Washington, has changed its stance: it no longer chooses between Trump’s policies and Cuban repression.
According to data from Prisoners Defenders, Cuba recorded 1,339 political prisoners at the end of August 2026, the highest number since July 11, 2021, of which 463 suffer from serious health conditions and 155 are women.
Upon returning home after the detention, López Hernández learned that the National Electric System had collapsed again—marking the eighth total blackout of the year, which left about nine million Cubans without electricity.
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