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Family handout<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe late leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, once famously called Cuba \u201cthe safest country in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n In terms of the island\u2019s low rates of violent crime and the scarcity of guns circulating among the civilian population, he may well have had a case for that title.<\/p>\n His critics, of course, responded that the low crime rate was achieved through intimidation, that Castro\u2019s Cuba was \u2013 and still remains \u2013 a police state which brooked no criticism of its communist-led government, and which rode roughshod over its opponents\u2019 human rights.<\/p>\n However it was done, few could deny that Cuba\u2019s streets have traditionally been among the safest in the Americas.<\/p>\n Yet it doesn\u2019t feel to Samantha Gonz\u00e1lez like she lives in the world\u2019s safest nation. Her younger brother, an aspiring music producer called Jan Franco, was murdered two months ago in an apparent gang-related dispute.<\/p>\n From the low-income Havana neighbourhood of Cayo Hueso and just 19 years old when he was killed, Jan Franco was stabbed twice in the chest outside a recording studio, caught in the middle of an argument when someone pulled a knife.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI still can\u2019t understand it,” says Samantha, struggling to express her grief as she scrolls through old photos of her brother on her phone.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was the light of our family.”<\/p>\n Just 20 herself and mother of a one-year-old boy, Samantha says that Jan Franco was one of many young people to lose their lives in the streets in recent months:<\/p>\n \u201cSo many young people have been killed this year,” she explains.<\/p>\n \u201cThe violence is getting out of hand. They\u2019re basically gangs, and they fall out with each other as gangs. That\u2019s where it\u2019s all coming from, these killings and deaths of young people.\u201d<\/p>\n They often solve their quarrels with knives and machetes, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost no-one settles an argument with their fists anymore. It\u2019s all knives, machetes, even guns. Things I just don\u2019t understand,\u201d her voice trails off.<\/p>\n The situation has been worsened by a new drug in Cuba called \u201cquimico\u201d \u2013 a cheap chemical high with a cannabis base. Samantha says that it\u2019s increasingly popular among Cuban youth in the parks and on the streets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Previously, even suggesting that Cuba had a problem with opioids and street gangs \u2013 especially to a foreign journalist \u2013 could land you in difficulties. <\/p>\n The Cuban authorities have always been fiercely protective of their island’s reputation as crime-free and quick to point out that the streets are demonstrably safer than those of most cities in the US. Anything that highlights Cuba\u2019s social problems is generally painted as biased criticism of their socialist system or as anti-revolutionary fabrications originating from Miami or Washington.<\/p>\n However, such has been the public perception of a worsening crime rate, a perception shared by many Cubans on social media, that the authorities have openly addressed it on state television.<\/p>\n In August, an edition of nightly talk programme Mesa Redonda \u2013 in which Communist Party officials are invited on air to deliver the party line \u2013 was titled Cuba Against Drugs. <\/p>\n During the broadcast, Colonel Juan Carlos Poey Guerra, the head of the interior ministry\u2019s anti-drug unit, acknowledged the existence, production and distribution of the new drug, qu\u00edmico, and its impact on Cuba\u2019s youth. He insisted the authorities were tackling the issue.<\/p>\n In another edition, on crime, the government denied the situation was worsening, claiming only 9% of crimes in Cuba were violent and just 3% were murders. <\/p>\n However, critics question the transparency of the government\u2019s statistics and say there\u2019s no independent oversight of the bodies which produce them or the methodologies they use.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For its part, the government largely blames the old enemy, the United States, for both the existence of synthetic opioids in Cuba and for the decades-long US economic embargo on the island which they say is the reason some Cubans have resorted to crime.<\/p>\n In a rare interview, the vice-president of Cuba\u2019s Supreme Court, Maricela Sosa Ravelo, told the BBC the problem was being blown out of proportion on social media. She refuted the suggestion that many crimes go unreported through a lack of public confidence in the police.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my 30 years as a judge and magistrate, I don\u2019t think that the Cuban people lack confidence in their authorities,” she claimed, speaking inside the ornate Supreme Court building.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Cuba, the police have a high success rate in solving crimes. We don\u2019t see people taking the law into their own hands \u2013 which happens in other parts of Latin America and elsewhere \u2013 which suggests the population trusts in the Cuban justice system,\u201d she argued.<\/p>\n Again, though, that wasn\u2019t the experience of another recent victim of opportunistic theft on Havana\u2019s dimly lit streets. <\/p>\n Shyra is a transgender activist who is used to speaking out about rights in Cuba. She says that her story, of being robbed by a man brandishing a knife one evening, is common. <\/p>\n But it was the police response which disillusioned her the most.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n \u201cJust after I was attacked, I came across two motorcycle police in a side street,” Shyra recalls. Despite her obvious distress, the police ignored her pleas for help, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cThey openly told me: \u2018We\u2019re not here for stuff like that.’ It was such a shocking thing to hear because I told them where they could find the attacker, showed them which direction he was headed in, what he was wearing. But they just didn\u2019t pay me any attention.\u201d<\/p>\n In the small apartment she shares with her mother, Samantha Gonz\u00e1lez watches videos of her younger brother\u2019s wake. A crowd of Jan Franco\u2019s friends appeared outside his home and began singing the songs which he\u2019d produced before his fledgling music career was cut short.<\/p>\n As his coffin was loaded onto the hearse, the mourners fell silent, except for the soft murmur of weeping and prayer.<\/p>\n Buried with him, and every young victim of violence on the island, is another piece of Cuba\u2019s claim to be the world\u2019s safest nation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png\")
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