Military Service: Young Cubans No Longer Like Olive Green
HAVANA TIMES – At the end of July, Felix Alfredo Gonzalez was detained for about 30 hours at a police station in Matanzas, on charges that kept changing during his arrest but clearly aimed to force him to abandon his activism against compulsory military service in Cuba.
“First they said it was for threats, then for contempt, because an officer accused me of saying I was going to shoot him. That same officer was involved in the abuse against my son. They’re looking for a way to pin a crime on me,” Felix recounted after his release, which was secured thanks to pressure from opposition activists and Cuban and US media.
Felix still faces the risk of the criminal case opened against him at that time, a process that could be dropped if he gave up his complaints against the powerful Ministry of the Interior (MININT). But as soon as he got out of jail, he made it clear he wouldn’t back down, and that regardless of the consequences, he would continue demanding justice for the death of his son Annier, which occurred on July 4, 2021, while he was on guard duty at the Combinado Sur prison.
The young man, 18 years old, had been assigned to the prison’s security force just 13 days earlier. That time, plus the weeks of recruit training (known as the previa), was all the experience he had when he was given one of the prison’s watch posts. Shortly after, he used his rifle to take his own life.
Felix has spent the past four years investigating the violations surrounding his son’s case. First of all: the lack of attention to Annier’s mental health. “The psychologists say he had a psychopathological problem of not adapting to Military Service. Of course he couldn’t adapt with all the abuses he suffered in training,” Felix denounced in an interview with Radio Television Martí in 2024.
Days before his death, Annier had even tried to hang himself, several of his former companions told his father. But the unit officers neither took action nor informed his parents. Nor should Annier have been alone at his post the day he died: regulations state that new soldiers must be accompanied on their first guard duties by more experienced conscripts. That requirement wasn’t met because at the time most soldiers were sick, likely with Covid-19.
Through his complaints and social media activism, Felix has managed to piece together the chain of events that led to Annier’s death. His mission is for justice to one day be served, and for all those who should have safeguarded his son’s integrity but didn’t to be held accountable. He also wants to see compulsory military service abolished. “Let only those who have a vocation for the army and want to do it go through it,” he has demanded.
Punished Opposition
More and more parents resist letting their children complete the “service” or even register in the Military Register, the step prior to mobilization once they turn 18. That opposition is fueled by constant reports of mistreatment in MININT and Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) units, the terrible housing and food conditions, and the exposure to dangers that have already cost lives.
Still fresh in the collective memory are the fires at the Matanzas supertanker base and the Melones ammunition depots in Holguín, which in August 2022 and January of this year left 30 combatants dead, 13 of them military service conscripts.
In neither case did the authorities issue official reports or address the families’ concerns about possible protocol violations that may have caused the deaths of their loved ones. “They never searched for the bodies or investigated,” declared Julio Cesar Guerrero, father of one of the young men who died in the Holguin fire.
Cases like those of Felix and Julio Cesar are exceptions, however. Anyone who publicly opposes conscription, or refuses to perform “service,” risks being sentenced to up to five years in prison. The new military penal code, approved by the National Assembly in mid-2023, laid out a long list of “safeguards” to protect the system of military mobilization that the Cuban government has maintained since 1963. The “defense of the socialist homeland” is defined as the citizens’ foremost duty in the Constitution.
Not even young people whose religious beliefs prevent them from bearing arms are exempt from mobilization. Last May, the case of Luis Guillermo Borja, pastor of the Evangelical Assembly of God church on the Isle of Youth, made headlines when he was arrested on charges of contempt and disobedience after challenging the judge who was trying his stepson for desertion from “service.”
Although pressure on social media and the active defense by his congregation managed to get the charges against Luis Guillermo dropped, his stepson’s situation remains uncertain: his family insists he suffers from mental disorders that should exempt him from conscription, but the final word still rests with the military court.
Fewer and Fewer Recruits
“The only safe option is to get the boys out of the country before they turn 16 and are called to register,” says A., a mother from Villa Clara who two years ago began procedures to obtain Spanish citizenship through the Democratic Memory Law. One of her main objectives in doing so was to prevent her two sons—now 14 and 10—from being recruited.
“I’ve seen too many videos and read too many Facebook posts about the atrocities suffered in ‘service’ to let my children go through that. God willing, next year we’ll be able to leave and put that problem behind us,” she said while waiting outside an international law office in Havana. Hearing our conversation, two other mothers present said they had the same plans.
The rejection of Military Service comes against the backdrop of the Island’s demographic crisis. Since 2021—when the borders reopened after the pandemic—more than two million Cubans have left the country, the vast majority young people planning to emigrate permanently.
Two facts highlight the difficulties in filling MININT and FAR ranks: the downsizing of numerous military units and attempts to extend mobilization to women. Although the authorities guard military and police information closely, in recent years it has become known that permanent units have been transformed into reserve units (allowing a reduction in personnel), and that military sectors and other auxiliary branches have been eliminated in small or sparsely populated municipalities.
Not even the country’s main military unit has been spared cuts: the Great Unit of Combative Glory Rescate de Sanguily, better known as Managua, after the Havana suburb where it is located. Created in 1965 under the Soviet model of a tank division, which maintained until the early 2000s, in recent years conscription calls to fill its ranks have been significantly reduced.
“In my time, just for the passes of the recruits from Camagüey and Granma—which made up two of Managua’s three brigades—you needed a whole train. We never had fewer than 800 or 900 soldiers. Now, at most, 300 or 400 boys come, counting both provinces,” explained Jose Carlos, a railway yard engineer from Camagüey who in February 2000 arrived at the Havana unit as part of the 37th conscription call.
Recruiting women won’t make up for the lack of soldiers, he thinks. “There’s a lot of opposition from families and people won’t give in, no matter how much propaganda there is. Besides, ‘service’ in Cuba is very much like slavery. You can’t send a young girl to load 100-millimeter tank shells by hand, because there are no forklifts, or to stand guard at night in the woods a kilometer away from the nearest post, like we had to do,” he reasoned.
The facts seem to confirm his theory. Despite official propaganda, only a handful of young women join each year as volunteers, and the attempt to make service a requirement for admission to Journalism studies ended up causing a drastic drop in the percentage of girls applying for that career.
“I highly doubt Diaz-Canel’s or Marrero’s kids—the president and the prime minister—ever wore the ‘olive green.’ And if they didn’t have to, I don’t see why I should,” commented Y., a 19-year-old from Las Tunas who last year moved to neighboring Camagüey province to avoid conscription. At his parents’ house, however, his formal address remains, and every so often summons still arrive calling him to service. A few years ago, his efforts would have been useless: he wouldn’t have been able to get a job without showing Military Register papers. Today, with so many private businesses, that procedure is no longer necessary. Times—and Cubans’ perception of “service”—have changed.