Related videos:
“Today the super humble little family tomb in Camagüey appeared empty”, with this powerful phrase, the exiled artist and activist Camila Lobón begins her public denunciation, recounting a devastating and deeply symbolic event: the disappearance of her relatives' remains from the Cementerio General de Camagüey.
The family went to bury a new deceased, but what they found was absolute emptiness.
“The ossuaries and the urns of none of our deceased were present”, Lobón reported.
The testimony, heartbreaking and painfully clear, accounts not only for the physical outrage but also for the emotional and spiritual wound it inflicts on those who still keep the memory of their ancestors alive.
The Final Dispossession: No Peace for the Dead
“I can't even speculate about the reasons behind this. It makes no sense in the most delirious bureaucratic logics, nor in the most miserable act of looting”, said the artist.
Among the missing remains were those of his great-uncle, a political prisoner who stood firm; and those of his great-grandmother Rosa and his great-aunt Mercedes, "the ones who raised us all, the most important and sacred people in the family."
Although Lobón defines himself as someone without particular religiosity, he revealed that in the darkest moments of his life, he has prayed to his great-grandmother.
But the hardest part -he claims- is the damage caused to the elder members of the family: “My grandmother and the elders, who truly need their rituals and go every year on anniversaries to commemorate their deceased, are devastated.”
A Cuba without solace: "They don't even let the dead rest in peace."
The narrative is also a chronicle of exile, of the pain of being far away, of the everyday weariness of those living outside while trying to support those who remained.
“Every day, one wakes up to a different misfortune about Cuba. You live in anguish here... with a sense of guilt hanging over everything,” laments Lobón.
"And one day you wake up to the message that in the country you can’t return to, they have taken and thrown away like trash the only deep part of you that remained, your dead," he complained.
Lobón concluded his statement with a tone of justified and dignified anger: "In memory of my grandmother, they will pay for it. Not a single one of their offenses will be forgotten. Down with the dictatorship!"
Testimonials of a National Decline
Lobón's complaint has found an immediate response in dozens of testimonies. What happened in Camagüey is, unfortunately, not an isolated case.
"A friend went to the Colón cemetery in Havana... the gravediggers confirmed, as if it were nothing, all the most outrageous practices that one thinks can't be true... burying the dead without coffins, stacking them on top of each other... blatant thefts... emptying graves and throwing away the remains," recounted an internet user
Another recounted a case in Cayo Baríen: “The kids… when the perimeter fence collapsed… found that some femurs were as hard and good as a bat and started playing rugby with the skulls… like billiard balls.”
"My God, the extent of horror in Cuba"; "It's the most outrageous, sickening, and cruel thing I have ever seen," lamented two other commentators.
Profanation, commerce, and negligence
Some comments suggest possible motivations behind these desecrations.
A user reported: “It's not that they are discarded. They are stolen to be sold for religious witchcraft practices. Not even eternal rest is respected anymore.”
Others go further: "It seems they are selling the pantheons... the disaster is in all spheres."
“It hasn't just happened in your case... I also know of family members who change and delete the names of the owners to insert others...”, another witness stated.
Another account details a similar case: "The pantheon of my family went through the same thing... it was sold illegally to the Ministry of Culture."
Institutionalized barbarism
The loss of respect for the dead is seen as a sign of a broader collapse: “I have stated that it is decadence and not a polycrisis… it is the systematic failure of a civilization-oriented model… nothing guarantees that when this transition ends, society will not reproduce that terrible reality.”
"In a country so desacralized... the looting of mortal remains could simply be understood as an expression of indifference towards the dead. But I believe it actually speaks of indifference towards life," noted another internet user.
"That country can no longer be called hell; at least there they honor their dead."; "Neither forgetfulness nor forgiveness."; "It's devastating and exhausting... they have taken away even our dead."; "Neither dying nor resting in peace is possible anymore in our land," were some other opinions.
The right to memory
This is not just a case of grave desecration. It is an affront to memory, a reflection of the complete degradation of a country that has lost respect for both life and death.
And it is, above all, a warning of what happens when a society deteriorates to the point of emptying even its own cemeteries.
As one internet user wrote: "Nothing is more devastating than a people who have even had their dead stolen from them."
A recurring pattern: Looting and desecration in cemeteries across the island
The horror denounced by Camila Lobón is not an isolated case, but rather part of a growing phenomenon that affects cemeteries in various provinces of Cuba.
In the Camagüey General Cemetery, for example, open graves, destroyed vaults, stagnant water, weeds, and general neglect have been documented; a state of decay so critical that some mausoleums are found without covers and filled with debris, while reports of looting continue to increase.
In other parts of the country, such as in the province of Las Tunas, serious desecrations have also been reported: at the Vicente García Cemetery, relatives who went to visit graves found remains scattered on the ground, with the burial urns stolen.
The same is happening in cemeteries in other provinces, where reports indicate forced niches, disappearance of remains, and theft of funeral items or even body parts.
The consequences are not only economic but also deeply human and cultural: the identity, history, and memory of entire families are brutally torn away, many of whom live far away, in exile or having emigrated.
Cemeteries, conceived as sacred spaces of respect—where later generations come to pay homage to their deceased—have become scenes of neglect, looting, and desecration.
Filed under: