Alexeis Serrano Águila raised his hands making the sign for “freedom” in a narrow street in Palma Soriano, a municipality in Santiago de Cuba. The intense sun soaked his clothes on April 12, 2026. He had gone out with a wheelbarrow to sell sweet potatoes in order to support his sick mother and wife. When inspectors tried to impose a fine of 16,000 pesos—an amount two and a half times higher than the average monthly salary—Alexeis exploded: “Down with Canel the murderer! A hardworking man (…) is not allowed to live in Cuba.”
His wife, Delis Frometa Suarez, joined him in his peaceful and almost solitary protest: “Down with Canel, down with Raul! How long, you damned people, are you going to keep giving him fines?” she shouted while filming a video that she posted on Facebook and has been viewed nearly 20,000 times.
On the morning of April 13, agents of the National Revolutionary Police arrested Alexeis at his home “without an arrest warrant.” Shortly afterward, Delis was also taken to a jail cell after approaching authorities to ask about her husband’s situation.
They remain detained to this day, “incommunicado” and threatened with prosecution for “contempt simply for uploading that video demanding their rights,” Yanelis Serrano, one of the couple’s daughters, told El Toque.
The young woman explained that her grandmother suffers from diabetes and has a psychiatric disorder. Her mother, who cared for the grandmother at home, is also diabetic and hypertensive. Alexeis is the elderly woman’s only son, and now she has been left, for the moment, without her usual caregiver or the support of the man who, with great difficulty, provided food for her.
“My grandmother receives no social assistance, not to mention the terrible condition of the little house. That’s why my father sold sweet potatoes.”
Yanelis says authorities “wanted to call in the riot police on him right there in public, as if he were a criminal.” She spoke with El Toque on April 17, before heading to the provincial prosecutor’s office in Santiago de Cuba to file a habeas corpus petition, the quickest legal tool in cases of arbitrary detention.
The legal aid and human rights organization Cubalex reported that Alexeis Serrano, together with his wife, could face a sentence of up to three years in prison if the contempt charges they are allegedly facing are confirmed.
Contempt is one of the crimes most frequently used by Cuban authorities “to silence dissent,” Amnesty International has denounced.
According to the observatory of the Cuban Institute for Freedom of Expression and Press, the case of the Palma Soriano couple can be considered an “arbitrary detention.” The NGO denounced that it forms part of “a pattern of repression against citizens for exercising their freedom of expression.”
Yanelis Serrano said that her mother was “deceived” by authorities in order to arrest her when she went to see her husband at the Palma Soriano police station. “They kept her phone to search it. That’s dangerous because they can access private and personal information,” said the young woman, who repeatedly says: “What pain, my God!”
She also claims that her father has “declared a hunger strike” to protest his arrest. Cubalex issued an alert over the hunger strike and demanded “his immediate release, urgent medical care, an end to the incommunicado detention, and guarantees for his family.”
The last few days have been even harder than usual for the members of the Serrano family who were not jailed. “Every day I leave my 18-year-old sister in charge of my grandmother and the house, I go out alone to handle everything, I’m exhausted, worn out, and without money for so many problems,” Yanelis lamented.
A 2025 report published by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights states that seven out of ten Cubans have had to skip breakfast, lunch, or dinner because of lack of money or food shortages; that figure rises to eight out of ten among people over age 61.
The attempt to fine Alexeis Serrano for selling produce and his subsequent arrest occurred amid a profound crisis in Cuba, marked by shortages of food and medicine and the deterioration of basic services, but also by reprisals against those who express criticism of the government.
Alexeis Serrano and Delis Frometa denounced that contradiction in the April 12 video: “There is fuel to repress the people, but not to bring rice to the people’s store,” she said.
Her husband declared: “The leaders live through abuse of power in Cuba against the honest, decent, hardworking people. This is not business [pointing at the sweet pototoes in the wheelbarrow]; business is what the government has, selling in dollars the people’s food that was sent free [by foreign donors].”
While the Communist Party regime denies the existence of political prisoners, independent researchers record between 775 and 1,250 people imprisoned for demonstrating in public spaces, joining dissident groups, or expressing opinions on social media. Soon the names of Alexeis and his wife could be added to the underreported lists kept by human rights organizations.
Authorities are already making them pay a high price for the last words heard from Alexeis in the Palma Soriano alleyway video: “Down with fascism, down with genocide, down with hunger! Freedom for political prisoners and freedom for the people of Cuba!”
This article was translated into English from the original in Spanish.
