Cuban State Security Defends Detention of 'Spiderman': "At Villa Marista, a Man Receives Clinical Assessment, Not Torture"

The blog Razones de Cuba, a propaganda tool of the regime's Counterintelligence and State Security, has published a post attempting to justify the detention of Javier Ernesto Martín Gutiérrez, a Cuban mixed martial arts champion known as 'Spiderman,' who was arrested last Friday in Havana.

Titled "From the Balcony to Villa Marista: What Anti-Cuban Media Conceals About the Spiderman Case," the piece outlines three main arguments: downplaying the protest as "public disorder," suggesting Martín Gutiérrez suffers from a psychiatric disorder, and portraying his transfer to Villa Marista as a medical act of mercy.

Referring to the athlete as a neighborhood agitator, the program hosted by Humberto Dionil López Suárez tried to nullify the protest and the fighter's complaints with the regime's typical narrative, laced with a mix of crude populism.

"No media outlet interviewed those who couldn't sleep, or the children who heard shouting all day. In any country around the world, nine days of public disturbance is public disorder, not activism," claimed Razones de Cuba, attempting once again to discredit the protest gesture and the independent media coverage of Martín Gutiérrez's case.

The MMA champion was violently detained after more than eight days of protesting from his balcony on Avenida 31, where he denounced the social crisis, the use of "el kímico," and street violence.

Plainclothes officers intercepted him on Calle 90 between 41 and 43, assaulted him when he resisted, and transported him in an unmarked vehicle to Villa Marista, the historical headquarters of Cuba's political police.

During his live broadcasts, Martín Gutiérrez had declared: "Women rummaging through garbage and children eating from dumpsters, while some have everything. There is no equality, not even in poverty."

However, Razones de Cuba dismissed these claims by invoking "neighborhood peace and children who couldn't sleep," as if hunger and blackouts weren't the real "ordeal" for Cubans.

This shallow populism serves a clear purpose: to criminalize legitimate protest by using neighborhood discontent as an excuse, while hiding the fact that MININT officials admitted to the family that the detainee was beaten during the arrest.

The Dangerous Pathologization of Dissent

The second argument of the post is more serious: the pathologization of dissent.

Razones de Cuba stated that "close sources indicate behavior associated with undiagnosed psychiatric disorders: incessant shouting, disorganized accusations, isolation," and that Martín Gutiérrez was taken to Villa Marista "for an evaluation to determine if he suffers from any disorder that could be helped."

This tactic has a long history in Cuba: Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was hospitalized in a militarized psychiatric ward at Calixto García Hospital in 2021, and Archivo Cuba called on the World Psychiatric Association to expel Cuba for psychiatric abuse.

Since the 1960s, Mazorra Hospital has housed dissidents falsely diagnosed with mental illnesses, subjected to electroshock without anesthesia and forced psychotropic drugs, practices documented by Amnesty International since 1977.

The pattern remains consistent: those who protest are not citizens with legitimate reasons, but rather individuals who "need help."

Villa Marista: A Misleading Representation

Villa Marista is by no means a clinical center: it has been the stronghold of State Security since 1963, established with KGB instructor training, where documented sessions of psychological torture lasting over eight hours, prolonged isolation, and fabricated confessions for state television occur.

In November 2025, the director of El Toque exposed the Cuban regime's attempt to coerce declarations through such sessions in this very building.

Razones de Cuba is not a journalistic entity either: it is a digital counterintelligence tool led by Humberto López. Meta blocked its Facebook and Instagram accounts in May 2025 for community standards violations, and in 2022 the platform dismantled a network of nearly a thousand fake Cuban accounts orchestrated to amplify official content and attack dissenters.

To conclude its infamous post, Razones de Cuba ended with a phrase of unparalleled cynicism and cruelty: Now that Martín Gutiérrez is detained, "in Marianao, neighbors sleep without shouting, and at Villa Marista, a man receives clinical assessment, not torture."

This is how repression operates in Cuba: not just with physical force and imprisonment, but with this level of institutionalized language manipulation, where arbitrary detention at the headquarters of the political police is rebranded as "clinical assessment," and legitimate protest is reduced to "public disorder."