Raudel Alejandro Guerra, 19 years old and originally from the town of Navajas in Matanzas, died after receiving a high-voltage electric shock while serving in the Military Service at a unit in the Cidra area of the same province.
The news was shared by his mother, Olguita Hernández Rojas, through posts on Facebook in which she confirmed and expressed sorrow over the death of her son.
In one of his posts, he wrote: “Rest in peace, RAUDEL ALEJANDRO GUERRA, I love you, my son.”
“Son, may God hold you in the best place. I will miss you so much. My heart is broken into pieces. If I could trade my life for yours, I would do it without a second thought. What a great pain!” she added in another post.
When several users asked in the comments what had happened, the mother responded with four words that encapsulate the brutality of the accident: “The 33000 killed him in the unit.”
The expression "the 33000" refers to a high-voltage line of 33,000 volts.
This is not the first time that this figure has been associated with the Cuban Military Service: a recruit from Las Tunas survived a shock of the same voltage at a military post in Havana, although he spent more than a year in intensive care.
Unfortunately, Raudel did not survive
A second young man in critical condition
Subsequently, the communicator Christian Arbolaez added on Facebook more details about the incident. Another young soldier was also injured in the same accident and was in very critical condition at the time the news was released.
The communicator stated that “so far, the exact circumstances surrounding this tragedy are not known”, and that the Cuban military authorities have not issued any public statement regarding the incident.
Raudel had been transferred from Navajas —in the municipality of Pedro Betancourt— to Cidra, in the municipality of Unión de Reyes, to fulfill his service, a forced displacement away from his place of residence that is repeated in dozens of similar cases.
Christian Arbolaez closed his post with a question that encapsulates the sentiment of hundreds of Cuban families: «How long will young lives continue to be lost during Military Service in Cuba?».
A pattern of unexplained deaths
According to research by the independent media elTOQUE, at least 89 young people died during Active Military Service in the last decade, with an increase of 280% between 2021 and 2022.
The Cuban Observatory for Citizen Auditing raises that figure to 97 deaths and disappearances between 2001 and the spring of 2026, with an average age of 18.7 years.
Just last September, Cubalex documented the death of two 18-year-old recruits during Military Service.
They are Yandiel Jurado Lastre, from Manzanillo, Granma, who passed away from a gunshot wound inside a military unit; and Leordanis Ramón Ricardo Batista, who died in the Nipe area, Holguín, after less than two months of service.
The regime's response to each death has consistently been silence.
Of the 46 families consulted by elTOQUE, only eight reported any official investigation, and in no case were the circumstances clarified or responsibilities determined.
Families that have demanded justice have faced reprisals: Orlando Lago Vega's father was sentenced to one year and six months in prison in 2023 for insisting that the investigation into his son's death be pursued.
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