Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, known as "Paquito de Cuba," vice president of the Cuban Journalists' Union (UPEC) and journalist for the official newspaper Trabajadores, posted a photo on Facebook in which he is seen wearing a curly black wig, resembling the appearance of activist Anna Bensi.
The image was accompanied by the text: «Just in case, I'm going to record everyone who comes to my house with my phone, because the CIA is threatening to take my virginity...».
The publication appeared this Sunday, just four days after the Cuban court found Anna Bensi and her mother Caridad Silvente guilty of the crime of "acts against personal and family privacy" and sentenced each to two years of restricted freedom.
The case originated in March 2026, when a mother and daughter recorded and shared on social media the visit of a MININT sub-official, Yoel Leodán Rabaza Ramos, to their home in Alamar, Havana.
Instead of protecting the citizens who unexpectedly received a State Security agent, the regime prosecuted them for documenting that moment. Before the trial, both were placed under house arrest and prohibited from leaving the country.
The process, presided over by Judge Zamira Marrero Morgado —noted by activists for her involvement in trials related to the events of July 11, 2021— took place on October 1 after being postponed from September 17. The United States government described the ruling as “cowardice”.
Rodríguez Cruz did not limit himself to the photo with the wig. In the days prior, he published two additional texts aimed at the same target: «As the great Julius Caesar said: ¡veni, visa, bensi!...» and «Another false heroine with a bensi-miento date...», wordplays intended to ridicule the activist's stage name and label her a fleeting figure.
The sexual reference to the "virginity threatened by the CIA" is not a minor detail: it turns the mechanism of surveillance and denunciation into a tasteless joke, costing a mother and her 21-year-old daughter their freedom.
Rodríguez Cruz, who describes himself on his blog as "martiano and journalist; communist and gay," mocks from a bus one of the two women recently sentenced by the totalitarian, predatory, and repressive state he serves with joy.
This episode follows a documented pattern. In May 2026, while traveling on an American Airlines flight to Miami, the vice president of UPEC mocked Trump's threat to send an aircraft carrier to Cuba. In March 2025, he ridiculed the closure of Radio Martí and cuts to independent media. In July of the same year, he claimed on television that the Cuban economy was improving and inflation was decreasing.
Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente, known as Anna Bensi, is an influencer and activist associated with the youth collective "Fuera de la Caja Cuba," founded in January 2026 in Havana, which uses social media to denounce blackouts, shortages, and repression. Her case reached NBC Miami and sparked international outrage, with coverage from DW, El País, EFE, and Telemundo, among other media outlets.
The image of an official from the state media apparatus disguised with a wig resembling that of a recently convicted activist, making a sexual joke from a bus, brutally summarizes the moral character of the individual and the regime's contempt for those who dare to document their own terror.
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