Journalist Carlos Manuel Álvarez Denounces that He is Being Kept in Matanzas in 'Home Kidnapping'

December 5, 2020. Cuban writer and journalist Carlos Manuel Álvarez denounced that State Security is keeping him in "home kidnapping" and preventing him from going to see his mother, who lives in Cárdenas, Matanzas.

"I have been in Cárdenas since yesterday (Thursday), I came to see my family, but I am still in home abduction. I was leaving my grandmother's house for my mother's house, whom I only saw a few hours yesterday, and after a few blocks they stopped me. I can't see my mother. The arguments they use are false, "he explained in a post on his Facebook profile.

"They told my father, who was accompanying me, that he was violating the quarantine. My father has been in Cuba for eight months. They told me that I was also violating the quarantine and I told them that my PCR was negative and that the health authorities had already suspended my quarantine since last Monday. I think these small-time municipal insurance companies did not even know that, and if they did, they acted even worse than the Havana insurance companies. Clumsy and ridiculous," he lamented.

Álvarez had been accused by the authorities of violating the health protocol for Covid-19 in Cuba after joining the activists planted at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement, hours after arriving on the island from the United States.

Alvarez's presence in the house where several of the activists were on a hunger strike to demand the freedom of rapper Denis Solís and against the police siege of which they were victims, served as a pretext for the repressive apparatus to assault the headquarters, after a group of presumed health workers appeared at the scene to take Álvarez away, ensuring that his PCR test upon entering Cuba had been "altered."

"There is an old snitch in front of my grandmother's house, named Nancy, who told Security that I was leaving the house. It feels like you are a criminal and a prisoner," she condemned.

Álvarez also said that on Friday "they organized an express revolutionary act in the main park of the town and brought pioneers from the schools."

"That pioneer was me once, 20 years ago, in that same park. I asked a little boy in the neighborhood what the act consisted of and he said: 'In shouting'. 'In shouting what?', I asked. 'Long live. Fidel ', he said like anything. It was my fun moment of the day, I laughed a lot. The little boy continued playing in the street, without even knowing, and without caring, who that man was. I envied him, "he said.

According to the account of the director of El Estornudo, they were able to "record the agents of the political police and also the plaque of the patrol" that detained him. This is shown in a video related to his complaint.

"The State Security of Havana and that of Matanzas do not agree on their excuses. Someone must be sanctioned there. PS: They are still sitting in front of my house," he concluded.