Cuban professor describes her violent detention: ‘Cuba is a police state’

Last Tuesday, Cuban historian and professor Barbara Alina Lopez was arrested by State Security agents along with another scholar to prevent them from attending a peaceful protest in Havana. The two women were beaten and threatened by the agents and had to go straight to the hospital after their release for treatment.

Lopez is now speaking out about her violent detention, which included being slapped, pulled by her hair, and being pinned down by an agent making it difficult for her to breathe.

Via Martí Noticias (my translation):

After being the victim of a violent arrest, historian Alina Bárbara López Hernández declared to Martí Noticias on Thursday that Cuba is a “police” and “mafia” state, governed outside the bounds of the Constitution.

López Hernández, along with anthropologist Jenny Pantoja, was apprehended last Tuesday by police officers near the Bacunayagua Bridge, which connects the provinces of Matanzas and Mayabeque. The two were on their way to Havana to participate in a civic action in Central Park.

During their arrest, they were beaten, slapped, dragged, pushed, and shaken by police officers, López Hernández reported.

In an audio published by the platform Cuba X Cuba, López Hernández detailed the events of the arrest, highlighting the role of a particularly aggressive officer from the PNR (National Revolutionary Police), who led the arrest.

She recounted that the officer grabbed her hair and pulled her head in various directions while pinning Pantoja down, making it difficult for her to breathe.

After spending several hours at the La Playa station in Matanzas’ capital, the two intellectuals went to the hospital, where López Hernández was diagnosed with “post-traumatic labyrinthitis,” an inflammation of the inner ear area that controls balance.

The brutality and violence suffered by Barbara Alina Lopez is not the exception in communist Cuba, it is the rule. This is life in a police state. This is socialism in action.