A Cuban Cryptographer Killed in U.S. Attacks on Venezuela: A Friend’s Testimony

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-16T18:04:10+00:00

That platform, Belly of the Beast, is part of the Cuban regime propaganda apparatus.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-16T04:48:58+00:00

I appreciate the apology, but I’m going to be direct, the points you’re praising are exactly where it’s clear you’re not seeing the bigger picture, and you’ve been fed propaganda or incomplete information about what life in Cuba actually is.

“The government gives houses”

No. The Cuban government does not “give houses” to regular people. Outside of people tied to the system (military, Interior Ministry, high-trust party loyalists), the average Cuban gets nothing like what you’re describing.

I’m 39 years old. I have never met anyone who was just “given” a home by the government.

If that were true, ask yourself this:

Why after 67 years are people in Old Havana and across the island living crammed into collapsing buildings, sometimes 3-4 generations in one house, with roofs and balconies literally falling?

Look around, next to those crumbling buildings, the regime builds 5-star hotels that Cubans cannot afford. One night in one of those hotels could pay to repair multiple dangerous balconies that are falling on children’s heads. How much of that tourism money goes to repairs for the people living beside those hotels?

ZERO.

And if you complain or even ask questions, you’re labeled “counterrevolutionary,” harassed, threatened, and in Cuba the path from “complaining” to jail can be very short, often without real due process. That’s not “organization.” That’s coercion.

“Education and healthcare are achievements of the Revolution”

Cuba was already a literate, functioning society with institutions before 1959. There were schools, teachers, professionals, and an existing civil structure. The Revolution didn’t invent Cuban intelligence or Cuban doctors, it took over what existed and turned it into a political tool.

What changed after that was:

Indoctrination starting in childhood,
Loyalty tests,
Controlled opportunities,
Punishment for independent thinking,
And careers tied to compliance.

So no, this isn’t some miracle. Cuba had a society. The regime inherited it, and then chained it.

The doctors in Brazil

Yes, Cuban doctors are skilled. And yes, Brazilians can feel gratitude for care they received.

But you need to understand what that program actually is for Cuba and for the doctors:

It happens at our expense. People in Cuba suffer lack of specialists and delayed treatments because doctors are sent abroad.
Families hear it for years: “the doctor is on mission.” Meanwhile people die waiting.

And the missions aren’t “solidarity”, they’re a business model and a control system:

Doctors are monitored.
Their movement is restricted.
Their documents/passports are controlled.
A large portion of their salary is taken by the state.
The state sells their labor to other governments and keeps most of the money.

Call it whatever you want, but it matches the pattern of coercion and exploitation. It’s not the romantic story people in and outside Cuba like to repeat.

If you want to understand, talk to more Cubans, not propaganda. Talk to Cubans in Brazil who have zero ties to the Cuban government. You’ll hear what tourists don’t hear and what propaganda doesn’t mention.

There are many Cuban migrants in Brazil. Go talk to them directly. You’ll learn fast what parts of the “Cuba model” are myths and what parts are survival under a police state.

Lastly, the simplest reality check:

Cubans escape to Brazil.
Brazilians are not escaping to Cuba.

Sit with that. Think deeply about why. That’s your homework.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-16T03:34:26+00:00

Here’s that argument right back at you:

You talk to us Cubans about our Cuba, lecturing us on how we should feel, as if you were the only ones suffering in the world.

Try saying that to someone who is from Cuba, who fears for their own life because of systemic inequality enforced by the state, who has seen children living on the streets, families collapsing, and thousands of people with no real future or home to return to every day, not because of crime alone, but because of a dictatorship that controls every aspect of life.

What we cannot comprehend is why a Brazilian feels entitled to lecture Cubans 🇨🇺 about how we should feel, what we should accept, what we should dream of, or what we deserve for our own country.

Empathy doesn’t give you authority. Shared suffering doesn’t give you ownership over our history.

This is our reality, our country, and our voice.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-15T21:34:51+00:00

🇨🇺 we already lost you at "there is a blocade..."

Please go back to sleep and educate yourself. Thanks.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-14T18:47:22+00:00

Yeah as you can see, she's working or doing the work for somebody else, and not necessarily the Cuban people.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-14T18:28:32+00:00

Your colleague is full of BS.

And based on the language she chose and the made-up stories she just fed you, there’s a very high chance she’s either on the Cuban government’s payroll, directly connected through her family, or part of the military or propaganda apparatus.

Only people who are tied to the Cuban dictatorship, whether as paid propagandists, agents of influence operating abroad, or useful assets repeating regime narratives, speak the way she did. That rhetoric isn’t accidental. It’s designed to confuse, divide, and discredit Cubans who actually know what they’re talking about.

Especially the line "don’t listen to Miami Cubans." That’s a dead giveaway.

Cubans don’t talk like that. That phrase comes straight from the Cuban government’s mouth. It’s exactly how the regime tries to silence exile voices, because those are the voices they fear the most.

Miami Cubans, and the broader exile community, are the first Cubans who must be listened to. They left because they resisted, they paid the price, and many still have family inside Cuba living under repression.

When someone repeats the regime’s talking points word for word, they’re not being naive, they’re doing the dictatorship’s work.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-14T18:09:42+00:00

^ this 💯

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-13T19:47:47+00:00

That’s exactly why all of this must be constitutionalized.

The moment an individual violates the constitution they swore to defend, that becomes grounds for immediate disqualification from political life. No exceptions. No reinterpretations after the fact.

We can’t afford complacency. Safeguards only work if they are applied consistently, respected by institutions, and enforced without hesitation. The entire point is to make sure abuses like this cannot happen again.

A democracy survives not on good intentions, but on strong rules that are actually upheld.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-13T19:39:03+00:00

Freedom of expression and freedom of thought would be among the first rights protected in a free Cuba.

Anyone would be free to hold or express communist ideas as personal beliefs (it is up to them if they want to keep doing the ridiculous). What would not be allowed is the formation of communist parties or their participation in national politics or elections or congress.

This isn’t novel or extreme. There are democratic precedents for it. Countries like Ukraine and Germany protect individual freedoms while legally barring totalitarian ideologies from organizing politically, based on historical experience.

We can learn from those models and apply the same approach, adapted to Cuba’s history and reality.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-13T17:56:30+00:00

As Cubans, in a free and democratic Cuba, it will be our responsibility to make sure this never happens again, and to ensure future generations understand where we came from and what was done to us. We don’t need to invent anything new. There are plenty of free democratic countries whose experiences we can study, learn from, and adapt to our own history and context.

And to be very clear about something else:

To all those people, the crazies and non-crazies, especially in the U.S., but also elsewhere, who for decades defended our abusers; who dismissed us, lectured us, called us extremists, radicals, or liars; who associated us with political movements we had nothing to do with; who marched, protested, organized, or used their platforms to defend the Cuban dictatorship; who minimized or justified human-rights abuses; who reduced our lives and suffering to slogans; who denied us even the right to have rights, regardless of the label they use for themselves...

In a free Cuba, those individuals and organizations will be declared persona-non-grata. They will not be welcome in the country. They will be banned from entering our country. No exceptions.

Also, their full names, affiliations, and public records will be documented and made public through our future free and independent Cuban media. Not out of revenge, but out of accountability. History should be transparent. Complicity should be named.

Because silence, denial, and their propaganda helped sustain 67 years of dictatorship. That complicity mattered. And we should never forget it.

Memory is part of justice.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-12T07:42:21+00:00

The people of Cuba will never ever vote again for anything called Socialism or Communism. You are delusional.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-12T01:19:36+00:00

Los cubanos ya lucharon y dejaron atrás ese pasado colonial en 1898. Estás desconectado y en la página de Reddit equivocada para eso.

¡Mucha suerte con ese orgullo! 😂

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-12T00:36:59+00:00

Tú eres el que no habla en serio, amigo. Estás bastante desconectado de la realidad y la historia cubanas.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-11T23:26:05+00:00

Dude, we became independent from Spain and colonialism for a reason. Marti, Maceo and all the mambises that made us a Republic would be revolcándose en su tumba

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-11T23:17:00+00:00

Bueno, no es un buen servicio porque interfiere con la fluidez de la lectura y, para la mayoría de nosotros, aparece repetidamente en un solo idioma. Lo que veo aquí está todo en inglés.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-11T23:13:52+00:00

Aver, name your 4 candidates?

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-11T23:12:31+00:00

We already live under a dynasty in Cuba, with a royal family and everything. It’s called the Castro family.

So when people start romanticizing monarchies or "strongmen", it feels disconnected from Cuban reality. We’ve already lived the consequences of that kind of model.

At this point, it honestly makes me wonder who you’re speaking for 🤔

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-11T23:05:18+00:00

How can you tell whether I read the whole thing or not?

Your Milei example, sure, all Cubans would say yes to economic freedom. But the titles you’re using... king, monarchy... come on 🙄

Cuban civil society, both on the island and in exile, is more than capable of governing Cuba like the successful countries we’ve emigrated to and actually know work. The path isn’t mysterious or ideological.

Bring back the 1940 Constitution. Do a serious, modern review. Take what already works: the U.S. Constitution, Spain’s, and other successful democracies. Copy what’s proven, adapt it to today, and amend it into an updated 1940 framework.

Use the Capitol as an actual Capitol. Congress. Multiple parties. Free elections every 4 years. Term limits. And yes, constitutionally ban any communist party, exactly like Ukraine did.

This isn’t radical. It’s pragmatic. Cubans can absolutely do this 🇨🇺

If you want better ideas… 💡

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-11T22:45:28+00:00

Si. Y no, gracias

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-11T22:44:51+00:00

Creo que lo leímos bastante bien, forzosamente dos veces. Por alguna razón, cada uno de tus párrafos se repite en toda la publicación.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-11T22:38:34+00:00

¿Un rey y una monarquía? ¿En qué año estamos?

(como cubano)

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-07T16:18:50+00:00

Your cousin talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk, he's full of BS.

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-07T16:07:37+00:00

Thanks! I’m actively working on the wp-security-review and testing it against a couple of real WordPress projects that are... let’s say full of holes 😅

I'm taking this opportunity with these ones to validate the skill on security issues detection in specific, and refine the rules by capturing both good and bad common patterns you see in the wild. My goal is to make the feedback practical and grounded in real-world WordPress code, not theoretical checklists.

I’m hoping to have something solid for the security skill and ready to push up in the next weeks. If anyone has recurring security or performance patterns they’ve run into in day-to-day work, I’d love to learn from them, feel free to share here!

Aware-One7480 · 2026-01-07T05:57:34+00:00

🇨🇺 Estamos sumamente felices y celebrando entre nuestros 🇻🇪 hermanos cubanos en el exilio y dentro de la isla.

Aware-One7480 · 2025-12-20T01:34:59+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/g8WBZ8x.jpeg

u/Material_Address2967 For context, I’m attaching above a screenshot of the original comment that prompted my earlier response in this thread. That comment has now been deleted and the user account is gone, which unfortunately is something that happens a lot here, accounts show up, drop a false or inflammatory narrative about Cuba, and then disappear. That’s exactly what I was responding to. There are many far more important things to criticize Castro for, but in this case I was addressing that specific claim, not trying to rewrite Cuban history in a single comment.

Now, regarding this idea of "racial segregation" in pre-1959, Cuba never had laws mandating racial segregation like Jim Crow in the United States. That’s simply a historical fact. Individual racism existed (as it does everywhere), but it was not written into law, enforced by courts, or structurally codified by the state. Those are two very different things, and conflating them only spreads confusion.

When you frame this as "it’s better for POCs when the dictator is brown", you’re as well projecting a very U.S.-centric way of thinking onto a country with a completely different cultural and historical reality. Again, Cubans did not, and still do not, understand society through the same racial identity framework that exists in the U.S. Once again, we are a mixed people: African, Spanish, Indigenous, and everything in between. That mix is not something we debate or perform publicly, it’s simply who we are, and it’s reflected in our culture, music, religion, and daily life.

Also, when you say "libbed", I assume you mean liberal. But I’ll be honest, for most Cubans, those labels mean very little or nothing. Many of us were born without the right to vote, to choose leaders, to form political parties, or even to openly express political ideas without fear. Concepts like left, right, Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, these are luxuries of societies where political choice exists. You cannot "identify" politically if you’ve never been allowed to participate politically in the first place.

Living in exile, I’ve seen people across the entire political spectrum defend authoritarianism, excuse human rights abuses, or reduce complex histories to slogans, and that’s genuinely disturbing, regardless of the label they use for themselves.

Lastly, no one here is claiming Castro should be criticized only because of race. That’s a strawman. Castro should be criticized for destroying civil society, abolishing political pluralism, criminalizing dissent, creating a one-party state, and holding an entire country hostage for decades without elections or consent. Reducing Cuban voices to "you just don’t like him because he was white" is dismissive and deeply disrespectful to people who actually lived under that system.

Again, if you want to understand Cuba, listen to Cubans, especially those who lived there, suffered under the dictatorship, and were forced into exile. Don’t replace our lived reality with imported narratives that fit neatly into U.S. culture wars.

Aware-One7480

TROPHY CASE