The communist Castro dictatorship’s arms of repression can be very long. Not only do they extend across the largest island in the Caribbean, but into the United States as well. Jose Jasan Nieves Cardenas is a Cuban independent journalist who now lives in exile in Miami. But the distance and another country does not deter the Castro dictatorship’s notorious State Security apparatus from continuing to threaten him.
Via the Columbia Journalism Review:
The independent website El Toque thrived in Cuba during the period of relative openness surrounding the 2016 visit to the island by US president Barack Obama, during which he met with Cuban leader Raúl Castro. But rising tensions with the Trump administration, the transfer of power to a new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in 2019, the COVID pandemic, and a protest movement that brought thousands to the streets ushered in a wave of repression that forced its entire staff of twenty into exile.
Now it appears that Cuban repression has followed editor José Jasán Nieves Cárdenas to the United States. On June 21, Nieves, who lives in Miami with his family, received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number. “We’ve tried to reach you every which way, but you’ve rejected us,” the message read. “Now we will have to come to you personally, and we know exactly where to find you.” The message was accompanied by a photo and video showing the exterior of his home.
Nieves suspects Cuban state security, because he had previously received a slew of menacing messages on his WhatsApp from “Mabel” and “Franco,” which are the names used by the police officials who interrogated him on several occasions when he was still in Cuba. Nieves says that in early July he filed a complaint with the FBI, which handles counterintelligence in the US. (The FBI said that it “cannot confirm or deny any particular contact or the potential existence of an investigation.”) He is also going public, in revealing the threat for the first time to CJR.
Threatening an independent journalist in the United States would represent a serious escalation by Cuban intelligence, if confirmed. (The Cuban government did not respond to requests for comment made to its embassy in Washington, DC, and its UN mission in New York.) But unfortunately Nieves’s experience is not unique.
The news that Cuban State Security is threatening and harassing Cubans living in the United States may be new to some, but that has been the case for decades. The U.S., including South Florida, is teeming with Cuban agents who are extensively trained in the art of collecting intelligence, infiltrating pro-democracy and human rights groups, sowing dissension, and threatening enemies of the communist regime in Havana.
The U.S. government is quite aware of this, but continues to turn a blind eye in an apparent effort to not upset the Castro dictatorship. The subservience is sickening.