83-year-old Cuban veteran commits suicide after being fined 4,000 pesos for selling food to survive

Angel Pacheco Soublet, an 83-year-old former combatant from Angola, committed suicide in the city of Las Tunas, in eastern Cuba, after being fined 4,000 pesos and not having the means to pay the fine.

Pacheco, who received a monthly pension of 1,500 pesos, sold fruits and vegetables to help support his bedridden wife and his daughter, who cares for her ailing mother. 

The old man kept as a personal treasure the decorations and an award certified by the late dictator Fidel Castro recognizing his participation "in the heroic internationalist mission for the liberation, independence, and integrity of the brotherly people of Angola."

"It's unfair what they did to that poor old man," Pacheco's daughter told a neighbor who shared his case and identified herself on social media as Mari Rio Chico.

"How sad it is when you lose a neighbor who watched you grow up! How sad that because of extremist people these things happen! I received this news in the morning and it hurts me not to be able to be there to give a hug to my friend Yuliet or my neighbor Sandra," lamented on Facebook a former neighbor of the area living abroad.

"A combatant of the revolution, medals, decorations, demonstrating that one does not live on recognition," said Dianella Margarita Espinosa Peña. "Many like him went to fight for nothing."

In recent years, growing number of elderly Cubans who subsist on the island in extremely vulnerable situations, according to several posts on social media. 

In March, ADN Cuba reported the case of Melquiades Matos, known as "Blanco," a combatant and former police auxiliary who lives in terrible conditions in Maisí municipality, Guantánamo province.

Matos, 79 years old, enlisted as a combatant in 1959, with the triumph of the Revolution. In the 1960s, he participated in the capture of the "alzados" - people opposed to the new regime - and even saw two of them die.

The house where Matos has lived for 16 years is uninhabitable. The roof is improvised with wooden boards, through which water constantly enters. "The house is in shambles. I feed myself as best I can," he said.