The Cuban academic and researcher Hilda Landrove described on Friday the use of the Cuban legal system to protect political police officers as a "symptom of extreme degradation," in an analysis published on Facebook following the sentence imposed on Thursday to Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente —known as Anna Bensi— and her mother, Caridad Silvente Laffita.
The Popular Municipal Court of Havana del Este sentenced both to two years of restriction of liberty for "acts against personal and family privacy," as defined in Article 393 of the Cuban Penal Code of 2022. The case originated in March when the MININT non-commissioned officer Yoel Leodán Rabaza Ramos visited their home to deliver a summons from State Security, and mother and daughter recorded and shared the encounter on social media.
"The use of legislation to expressly protect the henchmen in a totalitarian regime is a symptom of extreme degradation that speaks both of state violence turned into the management of terror and of the illegitimacy of power," wrote Landrove, a doctor in Mesoamerican Studies from UNAM and a professor at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Querétaro.
The researcher highlighted the central paradox of the case: that the Cuban state, a systematic violator of civic spaces, now invokes the protection of privacy to criminalize two women who filmed an officer from within their own home. "Besides being a very malicious tactic in the ruthless imposition of power, especially in a country where the state has always violated intimacy or privacy, it illustrates one of the ways in which the regime seeks to provide its agents […] protection and impunity in a critical moment," she noted.
This reading aligns with the position of Cubalex: Article 393 protects the private life of citizens, not the official actions of a public official, and recording the police in the performance of their duties is a legitimate citizen right. Officer Rabaza Ramos himself unknowingly confirmed this in the video by stating that he had nothing to do with the assignment, and that it was State Security who sent him on the task.
The process accumulated irregularities from the very start. The case was initially shelved and only reopened in July following a complaint from the agent himself, who had previously demanded a "video of public apology to restore his honor" from Bensi. During the trial, only one defense witness was allowed into the courtroom compared to seven from the prosecution, and two witnesses planned by the defense were detained before arriving.
The court further alleged that the video exposed the agent's address, but the images of Rabaza Ramos's ID contradict that claim: the document does not contain any address field.
Anna Bensi stated at the courthouse: "My mother and I were found guilty of the crime we were accused of, an alleged crime." The sentence—two years of restricted freedom for each of them—generated widespread international backlash: the United States Embassy in Cuba published "Thinking differently is not a crime," and Cuban-American congressmen Mario Díaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar, and Carlos A. Giménez demanded the unconditional release of both.
Landrove concluded his analysis with a direct warning to those serving the regime: "In the face of the possibility of an end, those who have committed crimes have only two paths: either they change their position before it’s too late, or they continue to serve as instruments of brutal dictatorship." He concluded, "But it is a fact that the dictatorship will come to an end. Just as it is a fact that there will be justice. They will pay, and they will pay dearly for every tear of our suffering."
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