Historical memory
Against the myth of a “humanist revolution”, this archive gathers state crimes, massacres of civilians, forced-labor camps and political trials, with testimony and sources from international bodies.
In 1959 revolutionary tribunals executed opponents and former officials after trials without guarantees; Cuba Archive attributes nearly 100 executions directly to Che Guevara, who presided over the appeals tribunal at La Cabaña.
Tens of thousands of troops and militia fought the Escambray insurgents; peasant families from the area were deported to towns built for them, such as Sandino in Pinar del Río.
Between December 26, 1960 and October 23, 1962, 14,048 Cuban children left alone for the United States, sent by parents who feared losing parental authority to the state.
Between November 1965 and July 1968, some 25,000 men, among them gay men, religious believers, artists and intellectuals, were interned in militarized labor camps in Camagüey.
After a speech by Fidel Castro on March 13, 1968, the state seized 55,636 small private businesses, from corner stores and bars to barbershops and laundries.
After the arrest of poet Heberto Padilla and the April 1971 Education and Culture Congress, writers and artists deemed unfit were removed from their work and sent to factories, construction sites and cemeteries.
Over 16 years more than 350,000 Cuban military personnel served in Angola; official figures acknowledge just over 2,000 dead, a number writer Leonardo Padura called 'ridiculously low'.
In April 1980, more than 10,000 people entered the Peruvian embassy in Havana after the police guard was withdrawn; between April and October, some 125,000 Cubans left through the port of Mariel.
On July 13, 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa, Colonel Antonio de la Guardia, Captain Jorge Martínez Valdés and Major Amado Padrón were executed after a summary military trial on drug-trafficking charges.
Between 1992 and 1994 Cuba's Health Ministry counted 50,862 cases of epidemic neuropathy, optic and peripheral, linked to lack of protein and B vitamins; cases fell after vitamin supplements were distributed in 1993.
On July 13, 1994, state vessels rammed and sank a fleeing tugboat, causing 41 civilian deaths, including 10 children.
On August 5, 1994, in the depths of the Special Period, hundreds of people (thousands, according to witnesses) took to Havana's Malecón chanting "Freedom!"; it was the first mass spontaneous protest since 1959.
On February 24, 1996, Cuban Air Force MiGs shot down two civilian Brothers to the Rescue planes with missiles in international airspace; all four crew members died.
From March 18, 2003, the government arrested 75 dissidents, independent journalists and librarians, sentenced in summary trials to 6 to 28 years.
On April 11, 2003, nine days after trying to divert a passenger ferry to the United States without injuring anyone, Lorenzo Copello, Bárbaro Sevilla and Jorge Luis Martínez were executed.
A recording of the radio communication of Cuban military pilots during the shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue civilian planes in February 1996.
An interview with Orlando Zapata Tamayo's mother, recorded hours after the activist's death following an 85-day prison hunger strike.
Political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, arrested in the 2003 Black Spring, died on February 23, 2010 after 86 days on hunger strike.
Laura Pollán, co-founder of the Ladies in White, died on October 14, 2011 at Havana's Calixto García hospital; official accounts of the cause were contradictory.
State vehicle struck the car carrying civic leaders Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero; the IACHR officially found state agents responsible in 2023.
Cubans who left through the port of Mariel in 1980 recount in their own words their departure from the island.
Archival footage of El Maleconazo, the popular protest of August 5, 1994, on Havana's Malecón.
Emilio Izquierdo recounts in an interview his time in the UMAP forced-labor camps in Camagüey.
Rosa María Payá says in an interview that her father Oswaldo Payá's death in July 2012 was not a car accident but an act by state security.
A documentary on the sinking of the "13 de Marzo" tugboat in July 1994, when state vessels rammed civilians fleeing by sea.
After State Security raided the San Isidro Movement on the night of November 26, 2020, more than 300 artists and intellectuals gathered the next day outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana.
An analysis of "repudiation rallies" as a systematic tool of the Cuban state against those who try to emigrate or dissent, from Mariel to today.
Historic nationwide civic protests in over 50 cities demanding freedom, met with the regime's combat order and mass arrests.
On May 6, 2022 a gas leak during a tank refill destroyed Havana's Hotel Saratoga; 47 people died and, four years later, no investigation findings had been published.
Coverage of the gas-leak explosion at the Hotel Saratoga in Havana in May 2022, with a final death toll of dozens.
Approved on May 15, 2022, the new Penal Code keeps the death penalty for 23 or 24 crimes, depending on the source, and punishes receiving funds for 'activities against the State' with up to 10 years.
Lightning set a fuel tank ablaze in Matanzas on August 5, 2022; the fire destroyed four of eight tanks and left 17 dead, including four military conscripts aged 19 and 20.
Coverage of the August 2022 fire at the Matanzas Supertankers oil base, with firefighters and mandatory-military-service recruits among the dead.
A Cuban mother, filmed at the cemetery, demands justice for her son's death during mandatory military service.
Coverage of the 2003 Black Spring, when the regime jailed 75 journalists and dissidents with sentences of up to 28 years.
On October 18, 2024 Cuba's national grid disconnected entirely; two days later Hurricane Oscar made landfall in Guantánamo, where 8 people died. Further total blackouts followed on November 6 and December 4.
A documentary account of the summary trials and executions carried out at the La Cabaña fortress under Ernesto "Che" Guevara's command in 1959.
On January 7, 2025 an explosion at the Melones munitions depot in Holguín killed 9 conscripts and 4 career soldiers; an OCAC report documents at least 97 young people dead or missing in military service since 2001.
A report on nine mandatory-service recruits missing or dead after the explosions at the Melones munitions depot in Holguín in January 2025.