Iliana Hernández Cardosa (Guantánamo, 1973) is a Cuban activist and reporter for CiberCuba in Havana, residing in Cojímar, a municipality of Havana, Cuba. A cyclist, model, and dancer, she immigrated to Spain in 1996, where she studied Dental Prosthetics and Community Management, and appeared as a stand-in for leading actresses in various series and films.
She decided to repatriate to Cuba, where she created, presented, and produced Lente Cubano, an audiovisual program that captured the Cuban reality through culture, civic engagement, the promotion of private businesses, and the dissemination of both well-known and unknown artists within the island's landscape. In September 2016, she launched the program in Miami and was warned upon her return to the island at the airport about its content, particularly regarding the "Civic Denunciations" section. The audiovisual, which circulated online and through El Paquete, brought her to the attention of State Security, and in February 2017, Hernández, also a founding member of the Somos+ movement, was detained in Old Havana and stripped of her personal belongings.
Before this arrest, Iliana had already faced others due to her work as an activist in Somos +, her involvement in the Estado de Sats project in 2013, and in 2016, alongside José Daniel Ferrer, leader of UNPACU, who was deported to Santiago de Cuba.
Hernández Cardosa's work is marked by countless threats and arrests that have not prevented her from continuing her job as a street reporter in Cuba. In May 2019, she was violently detained along with other activists during the march organized by the Cuban LGBTI+ community. In January 2020, agents from State Security and the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) searched her home looking for red paint that could link her to the opposition movement Clandestinos, whose actions aim to eliminate images of Fidel Castro by splashing this color of paint on murals and busts.
In the Cuban regime's effort to boycott her activities, she was accused (January 2020) of the crime of receiving stolen property, and personal items were confiscated from her, which the regime claimed lacked documentation proving ownership. In February 2020, the activist received a death threat while conducting one of her regular Facebook broadcasts from Havana. A user entered to tell her that one of these days she would "wake up with her mouth full of ants." In June, Hernández reported that her internet had been cut off hours before a peaceful protest called by independent organizations to demand justice following the murder of a young man by a police officer in Guanabacoa. Ultimately, she was arrested to prevent her from attending the protest.
Iliana Hernández will continue her fight for change in Cuba despite the dangers and repercussions faced by those who oppose the regime. "They cannot force me to agree with a totalitarian system that abuses power, humiliates, mistreats, and enslaves the Cuban people," she asserts.
