Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, known as "Paquito de Cuba," vice president of the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC) and journalist for the official newspaper Trabajadores, posted on Facebook a photo in which he is seen wearing a curly black wig, deliberately mimicking the appearance of activist Anna Bensi.
The image was accompanied by the text: «Just in case, I'm going to record with my phone everyone who comes to my house, 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 of them 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-officer, Yoel Leodán Rabaza Ramos, to their home in Alamar, Havana.
Instead of protecting the citizens who unexpectedly encountered a State Security agent, the regime prosecuted them for documenting that moment. Before the trial, both remained under house arrest and were 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 11-J protests of 2021— took place on October 1 after being postponed from September 17. The United States government deemed the sentence as "cowardice".
Rodríguez Cruz did not limit himself to the wig photo. In the days leading up, he published two additional texts aimed at the same target: «As the great Julius Caesar once said: veni, visa, bensi!...» and «Another false heroine with an expiration date of bensi-ment...», wordplay intended to mock the activist's stage name and label her as 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 bad joke, costing a mother and her 21-year-old daughter their freedom.
Rodríguez Cruz, who defines himself on his blog as "Martian and journalist; communist and gay," celebrates from a bus the sentencing of two women pursued by the totalitarian, predatory, and repressive state that he joyfully serves.
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 that same year, he stated 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 power outages, shortages, and repression. Her case reached NBC Miami and generated 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 the wig of a recently condemned activist, making a sexual joke from a bus, brutally encapsulates the moral character of the figure and the regime's contempt for those who dare to document its own terror.
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