An Exiled Cuban Journalist Finds Threats Now Cross Borders
The independent website El Toque thrived in Cuba during the period of relative openness surrounding the 2016 visit to the island by US president Barack Obama, during which he met with Cuban leader Raúl Castro. But rising tensions with the Trump administration, the transfer of power to a new president, Miguel DÃaz-Canel, in 2019, the COVID pandemic, and a protest movement that brought thousands to the streets ushered in a wave of repression that forced its entire staff of twenty into exile.
Now it appears that Cuban repression has followed editor José Jasán Nieves Cárdenas to the United States. On June 21, Nieves, who lives in Miami with his family, received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number. “We’ve tried to reach you every which way, but you’ve rejected us,” the message read. “Now we will have to come to you personally, and we know exactly where to find you.” The message was accompanied by a photo and video showing the exterior of his home.
Nieves suspects Cuban state security, because he had previously received a slew of menacing messages on his WhatsApp from “Mabel” and “Franco,” which are the names used by the police officials who interrogated him on several occasions when he was still in Cuba. Nieves says that in early July he filed a complaint with the FBI, which handles counterintelligence in the US. (The FBI said that it “cannot confirm or deny any particular contact or the potential existence of an investigation.”) He is also going public, in revealing the threat for the first time to CJR.
Threatening an independent journalist in the United States would represent a serious escalation by Cuban intelligence, if confirmed. (The Cuban government did not respond to requests for comment made to its embassy in Washington, DC, and its UN mission in New York.) But unfortunately Nieves’s experience is not unique.
In 2023, the FBI charged three men in connection with a murder-for-hire plot linked to Iran. VOA journalist Masih Alinejad identified herself as the target. A 2023 report from Freedom House pointed to China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Rwanda as nations that have targeted activists, journalists, and others in the US, part of a global phenomenon. Russia, meanwhile, has charged US-based journalists with “spreading false information,” including my Newmark Journalism School colleagues Professor Masha Gessen and Press Freedom Fellow Mikhail Zygar.
When Nieves became the editor in chief of El Toque, in 2017, his goal was to create a professional news organization to occupy the space between state propaganda and the opposition media, which has openly challenged the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party. But as repression mounted, including the clampdown on the artist-led San Isidro movement in 2020, Nieves changed course. “We had to resist,” Nieves explained. “The challenge was how to do so without violating the principles and standards of journalism. We are not activists, but we were accompanying the activists.”
As its staff was forced to flee the island—today El Toque’s reporters reside in ten countries, from Spain to Mexico—Nieves developed a clandestine network of reporters that it still uses to cover events on the island. But what has distinguished El Toque is its reporting on economic issues.
It has angered Cuban authorities in part due to its unique role in informing the Cuban public each day about the exchange rate for US dollars on the black market, vital information that the government seeks to hide from its citizens.
For decades now, the Cuban economy has revolved around access to dollars—and to a lesser extent euros—which are needed to buy food, pay for medical care, and travel abroad. Families who receive remittances from relatives in the US live a privileged existence compared, for example, with a Cuban doctor, who might earn the equivalent of a few dollars a month. The vast inequalities created by this system have been a huge political challenge for a regime whose legitimacy is derived from its ability to deliver the basic necessities for all its citizens on an equitable basis.
The Cuban government sets the official exchange rate—currently around 120 pesos to the dollar for individuals—and imposes strict requirements on access to hard currency. But this restrictive policy has only deepened dependence on the black market, where the rate of exchange is negotiated, often using messaging apps.
Working with a computer scientist and using AI to scour the apps, El Toque is able to determine the prevailing black market rates, which it publishes on the front page of its website. It’s currently calculated at 340 pesos to the dollar, nearly three times the official rate. El Toque’s figure is used by businesses from taxis to restaurants to set the rate of exchange. The hundreds of thousands of Cubans who have gone into exile in recent years, taking their life savings with them, also need access to dollars.
The Cuban government has reacted with fury. It has attempted to disrupt the AI algorithm by flooding message boards with false information about the exchange rate. Nieves says that the tool can detect and eliminate this noise. The Cuban government has also come after Nieves in a more personal way—it denounced him in the government-backed media as a CIA agent and profiteer who is seeking to manipulate the exchange rate for his personal benefit.
Nieves dismisses those attacks—he says that El Toque survives modestly on grants from governments and foundations and with limited advertising. But he can’t dismiss the latest threat.
“It confirms what we already knew,” Nieves explained. “The Cuban regime has spies within our community. I think their goal is to instill fear. The only recourse is to hope that they are not capable of doing something more. But I can’t just think about myself—I have to think about my family, my two small children and my wife. I think part of the strategy of these authoritarian governments is to make us seem paranoid, like we’re playing the victim.”
In fact, transnational repression is real, and it’s a tactic that authoritarian governments resort to when forcing journalists into exile fails to silence them. It’s also why defending the rights of journalists like Nieves is so essential in ensuring those living in repressed societies around the world remain informed.
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