‘They are killing us’: Murders of women in Cuba are growing at an alarming rate

In the first days of this year, Arelis Almarales Alberteris told her mother she was happy.

She had gotten divorced the year before and left the house in a small town in Holguín, in eastern Cuba, where she had lived with René Ferias, her husband of 22 years.

A few days later, at dawn on Jan. 26, Ferias attacked her with a machete and killed her. “Imagine seeing your daughter hacked to pieces by a nasty man, who had not even been her husband for over a year, because he found out that she had another relationship,” said her mother, Nancy Alberteris.