The Cuban historian and activist Alina Bárbara López Hernández denounced the torture she suffered at the hands of police officers during one of her many detentions, in an account that starkly reveals the level of brutality of the regime's repressive apparatus.
In a post on Facebook, López Hernández describes how the officer named María Juantorena brutally beat her, dragged her along the ground by her feet with the help of several male police officers, handcuffed her, and deliberately twisted her hands to inflict more pain.
In response to that aggression, she asked the officer: "What is the difference between what you do and what Batista's hitmen did during that dictatorship?"
The academic does not specify what the repressive authority replied to her. However, she does reveal the regime's response, which was neither an investigation nor a sanction against the police; quite the opposite: the prosecutor handling her case deemed the term "hitmen" an offense and included it in her final conclusions before the Municipal Court of Matanzas, where she is requesting four years of imprisonment.
The paradox is revealing: the state agents who inflicted physical violence on a handcuffed citizen feel aggrieved at being compared to the repressors of the previous dictatorship.
"Our case is just one of the countless examples of brutality and torture that we, the citizens, endure in this repressive system where the word 'rights' is considered subversive," concludes López Hernández in his message.
Since June 2024, the professor has been under house arrest as a precautionary measure, following the government’s initiation of criminal proceedings against her and the sociologist Jenny Pantoja Torres on charges of assault, contempt, and disobedience.
The Prosecutor's Office is requesting four years in prison for her and three years for Pantoja. The trial, scheduled for January 30, was suspended without a new date being announced and remains unscheduled.
The repression against this intellectual did not begin on that date. Two months prior, after being detained at the Bacunayagua checkpoint, she was beaten, immobilized face down with a knee on her body, slapped, and locked in a patrol car under the sun. A subsequent medical examination documented injuries that included a dislocation or sprain of the right shoulder and a subluxation of the left thumb.
More than two years later, and despite being under house arrest, she has maintained her monthly civic protest at the Parque de la Libertad in Matanzas—held on the 18th of each month since March 2023 to demand amnesty for political prisoners—and has been detained during these attempts, with holds lasting up to 12 hours.
During 2026, the repressive pattern has remained: she was detained at least five times while attempting to hold her protest: in February, April, June, July —twice on the same day— and September.
The Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba included in its list of repressors both officer María Juantorena Herrera and prosecutor Ana Lilian Caballero Arango for their actions in this case.
In July 2024, more than 220 people signed a letter of complaint regarding the police violence directed at López and Pantoja, including musician Fito Páez, writer Leonardo Padura, filmmakers Fernando Pérez and Ernesto Daranas, and actor Luis Alberto García, who condemned "the use of force, the criminalization of dissent, and imprisonment."
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