The Plague of Cellphone Theft in Today’s Cuba
Cellphone theft is ever more common in Cuba and contributes to the normalization of other crimes.
HAVANA TIMES – Have you ever felt the terrible sensation of putting your hand in your pocket to take out your cellphone, only to discover it’s no longer there?
It’s one thing to lose your phone due to distraction (and later thank God or nature when you find it somewhere), but quite another when you’re 99.9% sure someone just picked your pocket.
Like losing a piece of yourself
In most societies across the world, your cellphone, more than a device to communicate, becomes part of your identity, nearly an extension of your body and mind – a kind of prosthetic, with functions that were unknown to past generations. Cuba is no exception.
But those of us who live here suffer a screwed-up system that makes their disappearance felt with a particular intensity. First of all, buying a cellphone, whether new or used, is a prohibitive expense for the majority, who don’t belong to the privileged classes. To replace it, generally we have to depend on relatives or friends outside the country; either that, or the luck of having an old telephone, or someone who could lend you one, while you figure out how to get a substitute for the one stolen. Further, going online is more complicated here than in other places, so that digital photos, archives, contacts, and messages are more frequently saved only in the cellphone memory without being uploaded to the “cloud”.
More importantly, given the growing lack of cash in Cuba, the government campaign for “banking” prioritizes the use of digital money and electronic transactions. These are also vital since the electronic banking systems collapse constantly due to the blackouts, rendering their “face-to-face” services inaccessible. This has transformed the telephone into an essential instrument for all personal financial transactions. Hence, having someone take your phone is worse than losing your wallet: not only could the thief get access to your money, but – even if they don’t – renewing access to your own funds is going to take days, or more probably weeks.
Recovering access to e-mail and social media accounts is similar, in a country where internet connections are scarce and expensive and the cell signal is the principal way to be online, but getting one again is difficult.
“They lifted my phone on the bus:” the story repeats itself
I was on the bus, heading to a gathering at Vedado, and discovered my loss after I reached the stop closest to the site of a several-day cultural event and reached in my pants pocket.
The device wasn’t there… My colleagues at the meeting consoled me – EVERY ONE of them had a friend or acquaintance who’d had the same thing happen – some months, or even days back. They also gave me advice about what to do in the face of what had occurred.
With luck, I was able to quickly get a replacement SIM card with my old number from ETECSA, the Cuban telecommunications company. I had an old telephone at home that I had inherited from my parents and reactivated it with the new chip.
But I didn’t heed the warning: two days later, leaving the same event I had the same fate. I had the inevitable and totally normal battle with other passengers to get on the bus. Minutes afterwards, I noticed that the second cellphone had also disappeared.
Another day, I was positioned next to the door of the bus going the other way, past that same site, when I felt some light pinches in my side. I quickly turned my face to see what was happening, but there was nothing obviously suspicious. This time, I wasn’t carrying a telephone, since they’d taken the only two I owned. There was nothing left to steal.
But when I got off the bus, I noticed there were several small perforations in my bag. Obviously, the pinches I felt were the little stabs of the knives they stuck in to get the device they thought would be in there.
The paranoia of this situation converged in the thought that they were specifically following me to steal my telephones; and/or a gang was operating specifically at this point in the city (where the cultural event was), taking advantage of the fact that a lot of people were congregating and getting on and off the buses, so that without being detected they could strip them – with expert hands – of those devices so essential for contemporary personal identity.
Modus Operandi
Generally, the thief doesn’t act alone.
Following the customs of all pickpockets, the one who takes the cell phone out of your pocket, purse, or backpack, immediately passes it to an accomplice, who quickly gets off at the next bus stop and disappears. Even if the victim manages to identify the thief somehow and he’s caught by the police, he would be free of evidence, unless he were armed with “tools,” such as a knife for slashing bags.
Further down the chain are the contacts who buy stolen cellphones and sell them to repair shops, parts dealers, or second-hand phone dealers. These are people who specialize in “wiping” the stolen devices and quickly selling them on the informal market, either whole or for parts. The SIM cards are destroyed, and the memory cards reformatted for reuse.
The police reaction: “Are you sure you didn’t drop it?”
Decades ago, the Cuban police invented the legally non-existent concept of “theft due to carelessness,” which in practice blames the victim. When it comes to mobile phone theft on public transport, however, they’ve gone even further.
On the two occasions that my phones were stolen, I went to the police station to file a report. In both cases, they simply refused to accept it. Under the new criminal procedure laws, I was told, if it is not confirmed that a suspect is actually guilty of the crime, they can sue the officers who placed them in preventive detention. This creates a peculiar situation of total police inactivity in the face of this phenomenon that, according to a source from the Interior Ministry whose name I reserve, has become extremely frequent in the Havana megapolis, to the point where it’s considered “routine,” and, for that reason, the police simply decided to abstain from taking any action regarding it.
ETECSA’s role
ETECSA, the state telecommunications monopoly, is well aware of the phenomenon, because that’s where people go first to cancel their line. They probably even keep statistics, which the police obviously don’t, except they report all cases as “lost,” once again blaming the victims. Theoretically, they promise to notify you if the stolen phone turns up, either by detecting your SIM card signal or by the IMEI number, which is unique to each device (but which you are unlikely to know for your own cell phone). However – how would the stolen cell phone get into ETECSA’s hands?
Another problem arises: the company has a shortage of SIM cards (lines). Only certain ones can be configured with the number of the person who “lost” their cell phone. In my case, months ago, I had to search for these units by canvassing Havana for days. This difficulty is exacerbated today, because they practically no longer offer the service of recovering pre-existing numbers for those who ‘lost’ their phones, because all available SIM cards are reserved for “new” customers: tourists, or the empowered bourgeoisie who manage several lines for their businesses.
This represents a total lack of consumers’ rights.Recovering your number is essential in order to reconnect to social networks, such as WhatsApp, because your contacts know you by that number. Also, many systems use it to authenticate the user who reconnects.
The return of lynching and other demons
There are already abundant videos on YouTube showing mobs of people in Cuba lynching cellphone thieves that were caught in the act by their victims or passers-by. There are also narratives circulating as third-party testimony, or perhaps urban legends.
A Facebook friend recounted on her wall how she witnessed the lynching of a cell phone thief in Central Havana. The man was immobilized with a judo hold and his hands were tied behind his back with his own belt. Then they proceeded to hit him in the jaw with a piece of brick, knocking him to the ground. One of the “peoples’ executioners” lifted him up by his bound arms to make it easier for the others to kick him in the ribs and genitals, while his victim spat on his head. A crowd of onlookers surrounded the scene, filming it.
Some shouted: “Don’t call the police! Not yet!” Someone appeared with a metal rod to break the guy’s skull. My friend, frightened, dialed the police number on her cell phone, as did some other people. It took the officers about fifteen minutes to show up. Once the area was cleared, they took the semi-conscious individual away, while—no doubt—ETECSA’s precarious internet connection was uploading videos of the beating to the YouTube channels of influencers and witnesses.
The thieves and the inaction of the “forces of order” have normalized cell phone theft, which, in turn, has sparked the emergence of “vigilante justice” when a thief is miraculously caught. One normalization leads to another, while the phenomenon goes unnoticed by the official media. Meanwhile, thousands of customers have their phones repaired in private businesses with parts sourced from stolen phones, which the “entrepreneurs” buy from the networks of fences. Like in the case of digital scams, the entire process has managed to synchronize those “above” with those “below” in Cuban society, plus their “center” and their margins.