Cuban Mother Defies Draft to Defend Son’s Right to Object
HAVANA TIMES – Resistance runs in Ismari Saavedra Rodríguez’s blood. The daughter of political prisoner Ramon Saavedra Consuegra, she grew up marked by a stigma that follows dissidents through every layer of Cuba’s official institutions. A medical doctor since 1990 with a diploma in child and adolescent psychiatry, Ismari was denied entry into the specialty in 2009, supposedly because she had a daughter with Down syndrome. That year, she wrote to Juventud Rebelde, one of Cuba’s state-run newspapers, which published her story.
Speaking out, however, came at a price. What followed was a “cycle of reprisals, harassment, and psychological and verbal abuse,” she recalls. In 2012, despite finally enrolling in the specialty program, she was expelled from both the course and the national health system over what authorities claimed was a disqualifying psychiatric history. Ismari insists she was never even evaluated. That same year, State Security warned her that she would not receive a retirement pension and that “if she kept pushing, her family would pay dearly.”
Her ordeal worsened in 2016, when she supported her son Roberto Hernández Saavedra’s decision to defy Cuba’s compulsory military service (Servicio Militar Obligatorio, or SMO). Roberto, just 15 years old, refused to fill out the military registration form handed out at his high school in Encrucijada, Villa Clara. “That’s when the persecution began—on a child who wasn’t even of legal age,” Ismari recalls.
Military officers hounded him throughout the day—during class, at recess, and after school—asking for his ID and pushing him to sign the enlistment form. When he continued to resist, they showed up at the family’s home. Ismari made her position clear: she supported her son’s decision, and the harassment had to stop.
“We have no homeland to defend,” she told them. “This country belongs to the dictatorship, to the dictators and their children—not to us.”
Cuba’s Military Draft and the Recruitment of Minors
Under Cuba’s National Defense Law (Law 75, enacted in 1994), all male citizens are required to serve two years in the military starting at age 17, with mandatory registration at 16. The law doesn’t provide real pathways for conscientious objection, a right recognized by international law. Article 54 of Cuba’s Constitution states that this objection cannot be used to evade the law or obstruct others from exercising their rights.
There are no formal channels to file objections, nor any impartial mechanisms to review cases of draft resistance. Refusal to serve is criminalized under the Penal Code, carrying penalties ranging from fines to a year in prison. Individuals who decline to enlist may also be barred from leaving the country, a restriction applied extrajudicially in the name of “public interest.”
In October 2024, the government enacted Decree 103, which introduced harsher penalties for failing to register or respond to military summonses, intensifying pressure on those who resist enlistment.
This legal framework directly contradicts international standards. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has affirmed that conscientious objection is protected under Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—a treaty Cuba signed in 2008 but has yet to ratify.
Targeting a Teenage Resister
After military officials first visited the Saavedra home, the pressure on Roberto escalated. School authorities, including teachers and student leaders from the Federation of High School Students (FEEM), began to take part in the intimidation campaign. “And this was a well-behaved kid,” his mother emphasizes.
According to academic records reviewed by elTOQUE, Roberto was an outstanding student. Yet by the time he reached 12th grade, the harassment forced him to stop attending school regularly. Initially, he managed to attend classes twice a week, but eventually dropped out entirely after being told he wouldn’t be allowed to take final exams or apply to university.
In November 2018, a local police chief, accompanied by officers from the National Revolutionary Police, arrived at the family’s home. “They came to ask why I wouldn’t let him join the military. I told them, ‘It’s not me—he doesn’t want to. He’s not willing. So no, I won’t force him,” said the mother.
Despite being out of school for three months, Roberto took his final exams in May 2019, passed, and was accepted into medical school. Yet the pressure continued. In August, authorities notified him he was officially “regulated”—barred from leaving the country.
That same year, security forces staged a full-scale operation around the family’s home, involving over a dozen officers from State Security, the local police, and other agencies. Their aim: to prosecute Roberto for dodging the draft. A similar raid occurred in 2021, this time also involving medical examiners, prosecutors, and provincial Party leaders.
“I told them my son wouldn’t carry weapons, wouldn’t support the regime, wouldn’t kill anyone,” says Ismari. Roberto was forcibly taken for a pre-draft medical exam, after which he was given a psychiatric diagnosis that his mother calls “false and disqualifying.” The family has repeatedly requested documentation but has never received it.
A 2022 military registration certificate merely notes his discharge “due to Psychiatry,” with no further details.
Legal Loopholes and Intimidation Tactics
Ismari was summoned to meetings in Matanzas, Havana, and across central Cuba. One time —what she describes as a “roundtable ambush”—officials confiscated her phone and pressured her to accept a fabricated psychiatric exemption for her son.
She refused. Instead, she pointed to Law 75, which allows military commissions to grant deferrals or exemptions. “Why can’t they just postpone it? Why force him to go? Internationally, they claim it’s all voluntary and said they don’t recruit minors, but inside Cuba, it’s a different story.”
Roberto remained under travel restrictions until 2022, even though the military’s complaint against him had been archived since February 2020. His freedom of movement continued to be curtailed for two more years without any legal basis.
Punished for Saying No to the Revolution
Two recent tragedies have reignited public debate in Cuba over compulsory military service. In 2022, four young soldiers, ages 19 to 21, died while responding to the Matanzas oil tank explosion. In January 2025, nearly a dozen recruits died in a fire at a military warehouse in Holguín.
International watchdogs such as Amnesty International and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child have criticized Cuba for recruiting minors. In 2024, the independent legal group Cubalex documented at least seven deaths among young conscripts.
The cost of refusal is high. Young Cubans like Roberto face threats, psychological pressure, social exclusion, and denial of educational opportunities. In 2017, journalism student Karla María Perez Gonzalez was expelled from her university “for not sharing communist ideals,” she told the BBC.
More recently, in 2025, Hugh Dieter Pupo Santana, a first-year nursing student in Matanzas, was forced to abandon his studies due to institutional harassment tied to his father’s status as a former political prisoner.
“University is for revolutionaries”
Despite numerous attempts, Ismari was unable to secure Roberto’s university enrollment. Every government office, ministry, and campus gave the same answer: no Military Service, no admission.
In 2020, while accompanying her mother—who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer—to chemotherapy sessions in Havana, she used the opportunity to visit the Ministry of Higher Education, located nearby. She spoke with ministry lawyers, contacted the scholarships office, and even handed a letter directly to then-Minister Jose Ramon Saborido. One day, she caught him in the parking lot. “He said it wasn’t a problem, that my son would study. But after that, he vanished. Never saw him again,” she recalls.
In a last-ditch effort, she reached out to Communist Party offices at every level, including the Central Committee. She spoke with a representative named David, who handled higher education affairs. “It was all for nothing. No one helped. But at least I have the documents—the evidence,” she says.
As the persecution wore on, Roberto became reclusive. “At 17, he lived like a fugitive,” says Ismari. Military authorities warned him that refusing the draft meant prison. “He remembers it better than I do. Prosecutor Julio told him he’d end up raped or dead in jail.”
At one point, officials told the family they should just leave the country. But when they tried to send Roberto abroad to continue his education, the government blocked their efforts.
Now 23, Roberto shared this with elTOQUE: “I’ve been stripped of the right to exist and condemned for life. My autonomy is limited and manipulated by them.”
Between 2017 and 2025, Ismari approached nearly every institution she could think of—over 30 agencies in total. She kept a file of every letter sent and the response received and shared it with the elTOQUE team.
Among the offices she contacted: the Encrucijada and Villa Clara Military Committees, the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the National Assembly, the Council of State, the Communist Party Central Committee, the Ministries of Justice and Higher Education, the Central University of Las Villas, the University of Medical Sciences in Villa Clara, and the provincial and national prosecutor’s offices. None offered a solution.
Still, neither mother nor son has backed down.
“I feel proud of supporting my son,” says Ismari. “I feel dignified. And that’s what bothers the authorities the most.”