A Dog Portrays the Reality of Cuban Animal Rights Activists
HAVANA TIMES – Just as quickly as it had appeared, after only a few days, the story of the abandoned dog Yoni from the Cauto slipped out of the spotlight of Cuban public opinion.
The saga had begun right after Hurricane Melissa swept through the eastern provinces, when the Cauto River — the largest in the country — flooded dozens of communities. Nearly 100,000 people were evacuated; about 16,000 of them by helicopter.
Many of the airborne rescues took on dramatic tones. Some families had to be lifted off the roofs they had climbed to escape the floodwaters. Entire towns were cut off by the water, and helicopters became their only link to the outside world.
It was in that context that on October 31 one of the country’s main animal-rights organizations, Bienestar Animal de Cuba (BAC), reported that a dog had been abandoned during the evacuations. According to its sources, the animal’s owner had been denied permission to take it aboard the helicopter that would carry him to safety.
In the following days the Havana chapter of BAC launched an active campaign on social media, demanding from the authorities “proof of life” for the animal and even a rescue mission to take it to safety. Independent media and outlets in South Florida joined those demands, as well as another proposal: to take the dog out of Cuba, to “avoid reprisals” against it.
The story kept generating reactions until November 10, when journalist and animal-rights activist Rubén Javier Pérez visited the community of Cauto el Paso as part of a group transporting donations gathered in Havana. There he found Yoni and his owner, both safe and sound.
Unaware of the media commotion caused by Yoni’s story, the residents of that town in Granma province were struggling to recover what little the flood hadn’t destroyed. At the peak of the surge, the Cauto had reached a flow of about 4,000 cubic meters per second — 70 times its normal volume. In places like Cauto el Paso, the waters had risen more than three meters, covering houses and farms.
Yoni had not died, but “unfortunately many other animals did,” Ruben Javier Perez recounted. “I spoke with a man who had lost his two piglets. When the river overflowed, all he could think to do was lift them into the school’s empty water tank so they wouldn’t drown. He didn’t have time to do anything else before he had to evacuate. Sadly, the water level rose too high and both little animals ended up drowned. We also saw dead horses, and people told me about sheep that didn’t make it either,” he added in a Facebook post published while he was still shaken by the disaster.
Elitist animal-rights activism?
Ruben Javier said the uproar over the abandoned dog from the Cauto had been nothing more than a “tantrum from those who run BAC-Havana’s social media.”
His reasoning was not unfounded. Although BAC claims to have nationwide reach, in the days after the report not a single member visited the community in Granma where the events had supposedly occurred, to inquire about Yoni’s fate. Nor were BAC’s calls to mass-report the Facebook pages of Radio Bayamo and other state media in Granma well received — calls made in the middle of a meteorological emergency. Like it or not, those outlets were essential to the local population, and hindering their work only made life harder after the cyclone.
Other criticism came from an unexpected corner: opposition activism. In early November, Manuel Viera Porelcambio, a dissident influencer, harshly criticized BAC. On Facebook, his last post on the subject received 2,400 reactions and more than 1,000 comments, the vast majority supporting him.
“It seems hypocritical to me that they defend Firulai [a common nickname for dogs in Cuba] so fiercely because they’re animal lovers, yet none of them have shown any concern for the thousands of cows, pigs, horses, and chickens that were left at the mercy of the floodwaters. They’re not animal lovers… they’re dog-and-cat lovers. The campaign to defend Firulai in just one day overshadowed our political prisoners, overshadowed our hungry, overshadowed those left homeless, those stuck on roofs and trees, for one reason… fear. They’re afraid!” he charged, pointing to BAC’s alleged apoliticism.
The association avoided the controversy as much as possible, but noted that on multiple occasions it had confronted the authorities, and that many of its members hold critical views of the island’s political system.
It was the epilogue to a case that could have served to pressure Civil Defense to update its evacuation protocols during natural disasters — but ended up becoming material for just a few days of headlines in the independent press.
Channeling citizens’ frustration into concrete solutions is still an unresolved challenge for BAC and other Cuban animal-rights organizations. This applies not only to their relationship with state institutions, but also with the private sector.
At the end of July, a social-media complaint against Mascolive, one of Havana’s most exclusive veterinary clinics, gained traction. The clinic was accused of negligence leading to pet deaths, as well as overcharging for treatments and mistreating guardians who tried to assert their rights and those of their animals. In response, BAC called for a boycott campaign against the clinic until its owners accepted demands such as creating a clinical oversight committee and increasing discounts for rescued animals.
This sparked a back-and-forth through online posts — Mascolive responded by demanding “transparency” from BAC — that did not end until mid-August, when the animal-rights organization announced that the clinic had dismissed one of its professionals, but that it could not provide more details due to a “confidentiality agreement.”
“This case shows both the reach of these organizations and the need for effective oversight mechanisms in the private veterinary sector,” wrote the Spain-based Cuba magazine Árbol Invertido at the time. Its reflection was accurate: with most state-run clinics effectively shut down due to lack of medication and personnel, private clinics have flourished, many operating with almost no oversight.
Other ventures have specialized in the growing business of pet emigration, mainly to Spain and the United States. Since the activity is not recognized by the Cuban government, those who operate in it are not subject to supervision — which has led to scams and even animal deaths during transit.
For its report, Árbol Invertido updated its list of animal-rights organizations active in Cuba. As of late August, there were 21, although, as the magazine acknowledged, smaller groups may be working locally without visibility on social media. It is a fragmented landscape in which only two organizations have achieved national representation: BAC and Aniplant (the Association of Animals and Plants, the only group legally recognized by the authorities).
The division of efforts — which limits the reach of Cuban animal-rights activists — is a consequence of the country’s difficult economic and social situation. Like all other citizens, animal advocates are facing emigration and successive epidemics, the most recent being chikungunya. Many activists have migrated abroad or are dealing with their own illnesses or those of family members.
“In the middle of a crisis like the one we’re living through, with sick people and cyclone victims who don’t even have food, you have to be very sensitive when defending our cause and asking for resources for shelters. Sometimes campaigns like that of the dog from the Cauto do more harm than good. When people heard that story, some told me it was an example of selfishness while so many people had lost everything. I don’t know to what extent those who made the complaint were aware of the situation,” said Diana, an “independent animal-rights advocate” from Camagüey.
Ruben Javier Perez used the same label in his report from Cauto el Paso. Many animal-rights activists identify as “independent,” or connect only occasionally with organizations for rescues and other actions. The leadership of many groups lives outside Cuba, which limits their understanding of the country’s reality. Pages like BAC-Habana’s are managed from Miami, and even so they often call for unlikely meetings with the island’s authorities.
The movement has also failed to free itself from its Havana-centric bias. In Manuel Viera’s tirade, one element of truth could not be denied: it is rare for complaints to focus on the mistreatment of animals like horses and cows, or on the breeding conditions of pigs and poultry. The norm is to center on incidents involving companion animals or on the poor condition of zoos and aquariums. Only occasionally does a campaign like that of the abandoned dog from the Cauto draw attention to other areas — and even then, only briefly.