"In the iconic Colón cemetery in Havana, human remains lie abandoned as if they were rubble. The images are breathtaking and reveal the apathy, lack of humanity, and disrespect for our ancestors." With this brief text and a reel lasting just 30 seconds, Cuban independent journalist Camila Acosta announced the publication of a journalistic investigation into the terrible state of the necropolis this Monday, April 13, at 8:00 a.m.
In the video, Acosta includes images showing human bones mixed with clothing and objects scattered among the ruins of the iconic cemetery. "There are skulls, there are clothes, even personal belongings of many people. I would estimate, based on the amount of debris piled up, that there are hundreds of people lying there. They are not graves; they are rubble," the journalist states in the recording.
The complaint is not an isolated incident. The Colón Cemetery, designated a National Monument in 1987 and with tens of thousands of burial sites—many of them under heritage protection—has accumulated years of documented neglect.
In December 2025, a testimony confirmed practices such as coffinless burials, stacked interments, and discarded remains, reported by gravediggers to the families of the deceased. A month earlier, it was revealed by citizens and specialists that the place only receives sporadic cleanings presented as official propaganda, while it suffers from years of neglect.
Going back a bit further, to 2023, when the crematorium of the Colón Cemetery stopped operations due to electrical instability and fuel shortages, resulting in remains being stored in bags with weak markings that caused confusion among families. In February 2024, a user documented a trench filled with human bones exposed to the elements, and in December of that year, journalist Yasel Porto found vandalized graves and exposed skeletal remains while visiting his grandmother’s burial site.
The collapse is not limited to Havana. Cemeteries in Matanzas, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Camagüey, Las Tunas, and Ciego de Ávila have recently shown similar conditions of neglect and exposure of human remains.
Funeral services across the Island have also collapsed: non-operational hearses, a shortage of coffins, paralyzed crematories and bodies waiting for hours without transfer have been documented throughout 2025. In December of that year, a coffin fell from a hearse and the body was exposed, and in another case a coffin was transported in a cage truck due to a lack of available vehicles.
The regime announced in November 2025, during a meeting with President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the rehabilitation of crematoriums and funeral homes in Havana, and in December added 15 electric hearses managed by a state-run company. However, complaints have not ceased, evidence that these punctual measures do not solve the structural problem created by decades of institutional neglect.
Filed under: