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 that same province.
The news was announced by his mother, Olguita Hernández Rojas, through posts on Facebook in which she confirmed and mourned 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 keep you in the best place. I am going to miss you so much. My heart is shattered into pieces. If I could swap my life for yours, I would do it without thinking. 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 summarize the brutality of the accident: “The 33000 in the unit killed him.”
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 over a year in intensive care.
Unfortunately, Raudel did not survive
A second young person in serious condition
Subsequently, the communicator Christian Arbolaez added on Facebook more details about what happened. In the same accident, another young soldier was injured and was in very critical condition at the time the news was released.
The communicator pointed out that “so far, the exact circumstances of this tragedy are not known”, and that the Cuban military authorities have not made any public statement regarding the incident.
Raudel had been transferred from Navajas —in the Pedro Betancourt municipality— to Cidra, in the Unión de Reyes municipality, to carry out his service, a forced relocation away from his place of residence that is repeated in dozens of similar cases.
Christian Arbolaez concluded his post with a question that sums up the sentiment of hundreds of Cuban families: «How long will young lives continue to be lost during Military Service in Cuba?».
A pattern of unanswered deaths
According to a study by the independent outlet elTOQUE, at least 89 young people died during Active Military Service in the last decade, with a 280% increase between 2021 and 2022.
The Cuban Observatory of Citizen Audit raises this figure to 97 deaths and disappearances between 2001 and the spring of 2026, with an average age of 18.7 years.
Only in September of last year, Cubalex documented the deaths of two 18-year-old recruits during Military Service.
They are Yandiel Jurado Lastre from Manzanillo, Granma, who passed away from a gunshot inside a military unit; and Leordanis Ramón Ricardo Batista, who died in the Nipe area, Holguín, less than two months after being enlisted.
The regime's response to each death has been systematically silence.
Of the 46 families consulted by elTOQUE, only eight reported any official investigation, and in no case were the circumstances clarified nor were responsibilities determined.
Families that have demanded justice have faced reprisals: the father of Orlando Lago Vega was sentenced to one year and six months in prison in 2023 for insisting that the death of his son be investigated.
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