Cuban friends getting arrested for hanging out with us.

Since you stayed all night at their place, perhaps they violated the laws about renting casas particulares.

I remember talking to some young women on Paseo de Marti, and them telling me they didn't want to talk to me for longer than a few seconds in case the police were around; that was quite a few years ago.

This has been going on since we arrived in Cuba the first time, in February 1998. It is called a police state.

Plume,
It was illegal to stay at their casa overnight without proper documentation. It is not fair to legitimate casa owners who pay taxes.
BTW, did you give them money? for anything?
The police usually know the jineteros and prostitutes. So, if a Cuban girl tells you She cannot talk to you b/c of the cops...then most probably she is a prostitute and known to the police.
There is no law that states a Cuban cannot befriend a foreigner.

Well we didn't really stay in their house, we were sitting in their front yard chatting all night and then returned to our casas in the morning. I technically didn't even enter the main house.

Also no, I didn't give them money for anything. We got a bottle of rum, but they shared their sodas, cigarettes, coffee, etc with us in return. They were 2 Cuban guys, I'm a woman and my friend was another guy. There was a third guy who is Cuban, but has international papers because of his European wife. It was his house but he didn't get arrested. We all were friendly, there weren't any romantic relations or anything. When we were sitting outside the park drinking, the police asked us to move because it was getting late, but at that point everything still seemed fine. They didn't seem immediately scared of getting arrested. They told me that they usually get stopped and IDed quite a lot, especially my friend who was black and had dreads. So we just moved to their house.

Same in Trinidad, the friend I made there never asked anything of me, but still seemed wary of the police. I'm not sure what the situation in Cuba is with prostitution, or if it's very different from Europe, but I'm a woman in my early 20s and usually don't get approached by sex workers. Some of my male friends did, but it was always very obvious. But maybe I missed something, because I didn't expect to be approached.

It's good to know that there is no direct law. Though the charge they had against them (pretending to be tourist guides) seemed very random too. In Trinidad we saw one black guy get taken away by the police after just talking to a young blonde woman at the bar, though I didn't get the exact circumstances.

Do you guys know how long they can get arrested for something like this? The guys have my friend's email, but we haven't heard from them yet and it's been almost a week. It could just be internet trouble, but I'm still worried.

I have never been harrassed by the police in Oriente hanging out with Cubans and neither were the Cubans.

Never have I had this occur to me, and on several occasions in the past I have had too much to drink and instead of risking kissing the pavement I have just stayed over at a friends, usually sleeping with one or more of their kids.

But all these people are known to me and I am known to authorities because it is a smallish town.

I have also had several "fiesta de pajamas" - sleepovers- with my young God daughter without repercussions.

The cops know who is who in their area. I would guess that the people you hung out with that night have had other, justified by Cuban standards, run ins with the cops.

With that said, I have never, ever, had an issue in Havana and vicinity, Artemisa, and small towns in Matanzas with my wife. I'm white and she's a black Cubana. The above goes back to 1999 when things were far more tough for Cubans mixing with foreigners.

We have spent overnights in all those places at family and friends places many times over the yeasts. No one ever got a visit from the authorities.

I don't know about Oriente but Cubans, with no prior run ins with the police, don't have a problem.

Yea, that's possible. The police told us one of them had a record of pretending to be a tourist guide, but the thing is that at least with us, he didn't. The second guy didn't seem to have a record, but he told me that the police kept stopping him when he still had long dreads, though it became less after he cut his hair short. So I'm guessing he became guilty by association.
The third guy is Cuban but has European papers, and says the police knows so they never stop him, even though he spent just as much time with us as the other two guys and was there when they got arrested.

There was another moment I just remembered, where the owner of a bar was dancing with my friend while the police was in the bar, and he told her that he's friends with the police so he won't get in trouble for dancing with foreigners, but the other guys at the bar had to be careful not to spend too much time with one person.

So at least from what people told me while I was in Cuba, from cab drivers, to people at bars and uni professors, it seems like quite a lot of Cubans have pretty negative experiences when it comes to mingling with foreigners or entering tourist areas. I'm wondering if it might be a regional/class thing, because from all the accounts that I got, I don't believe that it is not a problem. I didn't experience anything like this in Havana, but in the smaller cities, people were mentioning it quite a bit.

The problem in Cuba is, the last people you would want to meet are the ones that will approach you.

I don't befriend people i don't know in Cuba unless they are introduced to me by friends or are, in some way, respectable if just by their positions in Cuban society or economic level. Don't mistake that for elitism. I know people, who i respect and trust, that live in one room wooden shacks with no bathrooms.

I have also been known to crash a street domino table and i never met these guys before...lol

It's a shame but you have to be very suspicious of any Cuban's motives when they approach you, a foreigner.

If you choose to do so, keep a level head and, if uncomfortable, don't be afraid to move on. Being rude in Cuba will keep you out of a lot of trouble.

I will add, and it's not trivial, if you don't understand what is being said around you, you are at a serious disadvantage.