Havana/Mike Hammer, head of the United States mission in Cuba, visited content creator Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente, known on social media as Anna Bensi, this Tuesday at her home in Alamar, Havana. The meeting took place in the middle of criminal proceedings opened against the young woman and her motherCaridad Silvente, and the sustained harassment of her family by the authorities.
“It was a great pleasure to finally meet Anna Sofía Benítez and her mother. They told me about their situation and that they are under house arrest,” Hammer wrote after the meeting. The diplomat added that the young woman told him that “the only thing she has done is express her ideas, her faith and her aspirations as a Cuban who loves her homeland.” “She is a brave young woman who tells things as they are. It is to be admired,” he concluded.
The pressure on those around him intensified just hours after the visit. This Thursday, his sister Elmis Rivero Silvente, a US citizen who has been visiting Cuba for several days, was summoned to the Immigration Unit of the Playa municipality under the pretext of an “interview for immigration control of stay,” as reported Cubanet. During questioning, officers attempted to find out if he had coordinated Hammer’s visit to the family home in Alamar.
According to the same media, the conversation soon led to threats. Rivero assured that the agents warned him that both Anna Bensi and her mother could end up in prison and asked him to talk “above all” to his sister “to keep her quiet, to stop denouncing the regime and to express herself freely.” The officers also tried to present the diplomat’s visit as a provocation and even alluded to an alleged United States invasion of Cuba, in another attempt to wrap a case of political harassment in the regime’s defensive rhetoric.
Hammer arrived accompanied by Leslie Núñez Goodman, advisor to the Office of Education, Culture and Press of the diplomatic headquarters.
Hammer has been touring Cuba for more than a year and meeting with activists, religious people, independent journalists and opponents. The visit to Anna Bensi is part of that series of meetings with Cubans subjected to surveillancepressure or persecution for political reasons.
Tuesday’s meeting also occurred in the middle of a blackout. Hammer arrived accompanied by Leslie Núñez Goodman, advisor to the Office of Education, Culture and Press of the diplomatic headquarters. Also in the house were the young woman’s mother, her sister Elmis Rivero Silvente and the pastor Rolando Pérez, known as Pregonero de Cristo.
Anna Bensi has become one of the most visible young voices on social networks on the Island. From platforms such as Instagram and TikTok she has denounced abuses, expressed her religious convictions and defended a vision of the country openly contrary to the official discourse. According to what she herself said, her exposure began to grow with a video in which she denounced the obstacles to receiving her university degree after graduating. Later he also ventured into music with my landa song dedicated to Cuba and Christ, and which is already on Billboard’s recommendation list.
Mother and daughter would have been prosecuted after recording and publishing a video in which two men dressed in civilian clothes are seen delivering an official summons to Caridad Silvente. The authorities allege that one of them, a non-commissioned officer from the Ministry of the Interior, felt “threatened” after the disclosure of his identity. The accusation reinforces, however, the impression that the case does not seek to protect individual rights, but rather to punish the public exposure of agents linked to the repressive apparatus.
The young woman said she felt “disgusted by this whole situation, by all the repression,” but stressed that her faith, her conviction and her ideals “remain stronger than ever.”
Far from softening her speech, Anna Bensi has responded more frontally. This Wednesday he reported that his WhatsApp account had been suspended. “It won’t let me log in; when I ask for the code it doesn’t reach my number. And people write to me and it appears as if I left the messages delivered,” he wrote. The young woman said she felt “disgusted by this whole situation, by all the repression,” but stressed that her faith, her conviction and her ideals “remain stronger than ever.”
During the meeting with Hammer, he insisted that he does not believe he is doing anything wrong. “I am calm because I am convinced that I am doing the right thing, that I am on the right side,” she said. He also expressed his desire for a Cuba where young people do not have to emigrate to aspire to a dignified life and where they can express themselves without fear of being repressed.
At the end of the visit, Hammer presented Anna Bensi with a small bell as a symbol of the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence. The young woman, for her part, sang them a song in English. The gesture does not alter their legal situation or stop the harassment. But it leaves an image that is difficult for the regime to neutralize: that of a 21-year-old girl, monitored and prosecuted for speaking, receiving at her home, in the middle of a blackout, a foreign diplomat interested in hearing exactly what power is trying to silence.
