A Cuban Cryptographer Killed in U.S. Attacks on Venezuela: A Friend’s Testimony

Yunio was a Cuban communications specialist in the Ministry of the Interior. A cryptographer. The father of three children.

He was sent to Venezuela on an internationalist mission, which was helping Yunio save money to buy a house. None of his friends and family imagined that he was at risk. Yunio died on January 3, when U.S. military forces killed more than 100 people while abducting Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

In this interview, journalist Claudia Rafaela Ortiz remembers her close friend: his work, his deep sense of duty, his dreams, and the moment she learned that he had been killed during the U.S. attack.

“I’m doing this interview because it is my way of fighting against what killed him. I have no desire to remain silent and suffer until it passes, or until at some point I forget that I lost one of my best friends,” said Claudia to Belly of the Beast journalist Liz Oliva Fernández.

TRANSCRIPT

“At 10:00 p.m. on January 3rd, a mutual friend called me and said, ‘Claudia, Yunio died in the attack on Venezuela.’ He was very young. He died at 31,” said Claudia Rafaela Ortiz, a Cuban journalist and close friend of Yunio.

“His name was Yunio, without an ‘r’ at the end. The civil registrar recorded his name with that mistake, and we used to laugh about it often,” Ortiz recalled.

“What I’ve mostly done since he was killed is write, because it helps me,” she added.

“We still don’t have his body, and I know very little about how he died. I imagine he traded his computers and encryption devices for a weapon. He died fighting, they told us. He had taken an oath. But none of that is any comfort, not even if he had the most heroic death. War, weapons, missiles over your head or over your sky almost always mean death or domination,” Ortiz said.

“If an army with the power of the United States intervenes in a country to kidnap a president over drug-trafficking accusations, accusations for which no evidence has been presented in any international court, and kills 80 people in the process, that’s anything but justice,” she stated.

“My heart started racing so much. I started crying,” Ortiz said. “I asked my husband to take me on the motorcycle to his wife’s house.”

“It was hard. There was a lot of silence. We cried a little. I promised her she wouldn’t be alone,” she added.

“This is the equipment he worked with. Those are the devices. He was a soldier, but this is the kind of soldier he was. He didn’t work directly with weapons. He worked with encryption devices and computers,” Ortiz explained.

“I have no idea how a cryptographer dies in combat. I imagine that as part of the resistance, everyone there was given a weapon. I imagine he died the same way a doctor dies when they’re in a war zone. The problem is that in a war zone, everyone is in imminent danger of dying, of having to fight and dying because of that,” she said.

“I never imagined his life could be in danger. I think everyone’s perception of the risk was very low. Even when there was talk of the escalation of ships in the Caribbean, he told me things had become very tense, but he was very calm. I don’t think anyone imagined the United States would dare to do something so drastic,” Ortiz said.

“Neither Yunio nor any of his colleagues deserved to die the way they did,” she emphasized.

“Yunio worked in the Personnel Security Department of the Ministry of the Interior. He was a communications specialist, in charge of encrypting messages related to national security,” Ortiz explained.

“Venezuela was an assignment he was happy about. I never knew exactly what he did there. I imagined it was basically the same thing he did here in Cuba,” she continued.

“I didn’t know he worked directly with Nicolás Maduro. I always knew there were missions in Venezuela, just like there are missions elsewhere. In Venezuela, there are Cuban advisers in the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Health, the Armed Forces, and the Ministry of the Interior. I always thought it was just another internationalist mission,” Ortiz said.

“I know these things because I was his friend, but that’s all I know. He was not allowed to talk about his work, and he never did with me,” she added.

“We always joked a lot. I used to ask him very uncomfortable questions, and he was always very ethical. He never wanted to tell me anything he couldn’t talk about because of his oath. It was a very beautiful relationship,” Ortiz recalled.

“We met in high school. He was from the countryside. We used to tell him, ‘You live in a place with arrows for directions,’ meaning really far away. When we became friends, it was like love at first sight. The three of us became friends: my sister, him, and me,” she said.

“We spent many vacations together. Yunio was a top student, offered a scholarship to study in Russia to become a cryptographer and mathematician. He was the first in his family to attend college and the first to travel the world, defying all odds given the poverty he was born into,” Ortiz said.

“Yunio was born in Palenquito Hill, a small rural village in Yateras, Guantánamo. If you look for it on a map, it probably doesn’t appear. On rainy days, you could only reach his house on horseback,” she explained.

“He fought to turn his rural home into one of concrete so his elderly mother could live comfortably. He was a wonderful son, brother, uncle, husband, and above all, an exceptional human being,” Ortiz said.

“He was the father of three children. Three beautiful children,” she added.

“We were very close. During the two years he lived in Havana, he spent a lot of time with me,” Ortiz recalled.

“He was a survivor. He learned electronics, learned how to make a living, and figured out how to survive in a city that is often hostile to those who arrive poor and from the mountains,” she said.

“He was very excited about his mission in Venezuela because it would allow him to save money to buy his own home,” Ortiz explained.

“His dream was a small house, bought with his own work,” she added.

“People of my generation have no idea what war really means. We’ve never seen it. I’m afraid the war will expand, that invasions will continue, that entering countries and killing people will become routine,” Ortiz said.

“Yunio was a patriot. He loved what he did. I don’t think he would have regretted the life he chose, because it allowed him to improve his family’s situation,” she stated.

“What I want people to remember is that he was the most intelligent, hardworking, persistent, and above all loyal person I’ve ever known,” Ortiz concluded.

“This interview is my way of remembering him and my way of fighting against what killed him. I have no desire to stay silent or to suffer until it passes or until I forget that I lost one of my best friends,” she said.