Another Cuban Libertarian Disappeared; His Associates Fear He’s Been Secretly Arrested

Another libertarian activist in Cuba may have been taken into illegitimate custody by the Castro regime, his associates in the Partido Libertario Cubano – Jose Marti are reporting.

Nelson Rodriguez Chartrand, who wrote an article in the PanAm Post which I reported on here last week, about a rebel poster campaign that he was involved in to remind Havana about two other libertarian activists in Cuban custody, Ubaldo Herrera Hernandez and Manuel Velazquez Visea, has himself disappeared.

Zach Foster, an American libertarian with the Nevada L.P. who is in communication with the Cuban libertarians, reports at the Libertarian Republic that Chartrand:

disappeared on the night of May 22 under very suspicious circumstances. We in the Cuban LP and LP Nevada believe Nelson was kidnapped on his way home by State Security! The party leaders have searched all the police stations and jailhouses but magically, he’s nowhere in the records….

the police have been contacted, but “No crime has been committed; not coming home isn’t a crime,” and he hasn’t been gone long enough yet to be considered a missing person.

Foster reports that State Security officers were seen tailing Chartrand before he disappeared, and that he is not in any local hospitals.

While assuming that someone who doesn’t come home has been secretly arrested might seem a baroque fear to an American, as Foster notes “Invisible arrests in the middle of the night are common in Cuba” and he was a part of a poster campaign in Havana that the authorities would certainly disapprove of.