Alina Bárbara LÓPEZ HERNÁNDEZ

Throughout 2025, historian and academic Alina Bárbara López Hernández remained subjected to judicial harassment relating to her June 2024 arrest, when she and fellow academic Jenny Victoria Pantoja Torres (see entry below) were detained while travelling to Havana for a peaceful protest and subjected to police violence (see Case Lists 2023/4-2025).  In May 2025, the Public Prosecutor’s office sent her case for trial on charges of ‘contempt’, ‘disobedience’, and ‘assault. No trial had taken place by the end of the year.

Reports throughout the year also indicated other forms of harassment, including repeated house surveillance; temporary interruptions of internet and mobile services; pressure on her daughter; being threatened with being arrested or facing brief detentions. On 18 December, state security agents intercepted her while she was on her way to her regular peaceful protest in Matanzas and detained her for several hours. Alina's daughter, Lilian Borroto López, who came out to protest her arrest, was also detained hours later.  

Alina Bárbara López Hernández, born in Matanzas in 1965, is an essayist, editor and researcher. She works for Ediciones Matanzas publishing house. She is the author of several books of essays such as Segundas Lecturas. Intelectualidad, política y cultura en la República burguesa (Second Readings. Intellectuality, politics and culture in the bourgeois Republic), En tiempos de blogosfera (In times of blogosphere), and El (des) conocido Juan Marinello (The (un)Known Juan Marinello). She has been awarded prizes such as the 2008 Juan Marinello National Essay Prize and the 2013 Matanzas City Foundation Prize; National Prize of Cultural Investigation 2014.