for “Revealing Military Secrets”

Photo: Collage by El Toque with screenshots

By Raul Medina Orama (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES – “If you are watching this video, it means that, unfortunately, I have been imprisoned, separated from my home and from my daughter…,” said Cuban citizen Eduardo Ceballos Perez, known as “Eddy,” in a short video recorded in April 2026. The moment he anticipated arrived on June 1, when he was ambushed near his home in Havana by State Security agents who did not allow him to say goodbye to his family.

Witnesses to the arrest described a police operation involving several people and motorcycles used by State Security to capture a young man who had spent months humorously portraying the material decay of the “Socialist Revolution.”

A few weeks earlier, he had been served with a police summons containing errors in his name, according to Ernesto Morales, a journalist living in the United States and a friend of Eddy’s, to whom he had sent the video in anticipation of his arrest. Ceballos, creator of the YouTube channel Despingovery, suspected that his parodies of documentaries from the US American channel Discovery Channel—mimicking their style in the Cuban context—would not be tolerated by those in power for much longer.

After the arrest, Morales reported that Ceballos was being held “completely incommunicado” and that his family did not know the specific charges against him. The journalist also said on his YouTube program that family visits would not be allowed at least until Monday, June 8.

According to Marti Noticias, Ceballos was taken to a Criminal Investigation Unit located in Havana’s Boyeros municipality. Authorities are reportedly considering trying the comedian before a military court for allegedly “revealing military secrets,” Morales added, citing sources close to the detainee.

The last video Eddy Ceballos published on Despingovery was filmed at an abandoned military installation—whose location he did not disclose—where old anti-aircraft missiles, radar systems, and other obsolete equipment, rusted by years of exposure to the elements, can be seen scattered like an elephant graveyard.

“An air-to-ground missile from approximately the 1960s, from the Cold War. … Look at this, lovers of absurdity,” said Ceballos while portraying his comic character, inspired by Indiana Jones, who “explored” the surreal results of nearly 70 years of Castroism.

The video has accumulated 30,000 views on YouTube and more than 400 comments. Its imagery and satirical narrative contrast sharply with reports from the state press and the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which for months have released videos and solemn statements about military exercises intended to demonstrate a supposed “combat readiness” amid tensions with the United States government.

In an earlier interview with El Toque, Ceballos explained what he hoped to achieve with his satirical videos:

“There’s a phrase I love: ‘It is the jester’s privilege to say what others fear.’ … I want to achieve that brilliance of saying positive things, but with so much sarcasm that it is actually criticism. That contradiction in which I’m not attacking anything and, at the same time, I’m confronting everything.”

Following his detention, the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights expressed its “condemnation” of the arrest, while the US Embassy in Havana questioned the detention and shared Ceballos’s denunciation video.

Several Cuban comedians have also spoken out in support of Eddy, who before gaining notoriety on social media through Despingovery was better known for his association with the comedy group Pagola La Paga.

Writer Jorge Bacallao posted on Facebook: “He is my friend and a comedian like me (…), all my support for him and his family.”

Ulises Toirac predicted on his social media that his “fears, based on the laws enacted in Cuba regarding social communication, would become a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of comedians.” The well-known actor and comedian added: “I hope that despite the way his detention was carried out (…), it does not escalate and that he is released quickly. My support for Eddy Ceballos.”

The young man’s detention fits into a broader pattern of harassment against influencers and citizens who express themselves freely on the Internet. It includes other recent cases such as Ernesto Ricardo Medina and Kamil Zayas Perez, who were arrested in Holguin on February 6, 2026, for criticizing Cuba’s political system on the social media platforms of the El4tico project. Ernesto and Kamil remain in “pretrial detention.”

According to estimates by human rights organizations, between 796 and 1,260 people are currently imprisoned in Cuba for political reasons. Eduardo Ceballos acted fully aware that his videos could make him one more among them because, as he put it, on the island “there is not the slightest trace of freedom of expression, not the slightest respect for any human right.”

“I want to ask you, not only for me, but for all those who are imprisoned today for political reasons, not to let them die, not to let them be forgotten… we have to fight this battle,” Ceballos concluded in the message that anticipated his detention.

First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.