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The son of a Cuban veteran who fought in Angola publicly reported that his father's body has been unable to be buried for over 24 hours in the Moa Cemetery, located in the province of Holguín, because the coffin does not fit in the veterans' mausoleum.
The deceased passed away on Tuesday at 11:40 in the morning. His son recorded a video from the cemetery itself and shared it on Facebook, where he showed the casket and the family gathered in evident distress.
"My father passed away yesterday at eleven forty in the morning. My father has already been deceased for twenty-four hours. I have him at the cemetery in Moa and they haven't been able to bury my father because his coffin is very large, and my father was very big," the man reported in the video.
The family member explained that the authorities took them to the cemetery for the fighters, the place where the veteran should rightfully rest, but the coffin does not fit into any of the available graves.
"Here, no party secretary has come; no one has come. I'm not counter-revolutionary or anything like that, but I have a loved one in a casket, and my dad is already starting to smell," he stated with evident desperation.
The complainant directly blamed an official identified as Chacón for preventing the burial in the veterans' cemetery: "The one responsible for all this that's happening is Chacón, because my dad went to Angola to fight. My dad went to Angola to fight, and Chacón doesn't want my dad to be buried in the veterans' cemetery."
The case has a particularly painful symbolic dimension: the regime that sent hundreds of thousands of Cubans to fight in Africa today does not ensure even a dignified burial for those who survived that war. Cuba deployed approximately 377,000 military personnel in Angola between 1975 and 1991 as part of Operation Carlota.
What happened in Moa is not an isolated incident. The crisis of funeral services in Cuba has been steadily worsening, with a shortage of coffins, non-operational hearses, and delays of over 12 hours in the transfer of bodies.
In Holguín, the province to which Moa belongs, delays in funeral services sparked protests from desperate families. In December 2025, a coffin fell from a hearse in front of the grieving relatives, and in Guantánamo, coffins with broken glass were reported. This month, the Las Tunas cemetery suspended burials due to a complete collapse of its infrastructure.
The abandonment of Angola veterans by the Cuban state is a documented phenomenon. Their pensions range from 1,500 to 2,000 Cuban pesos per month, equivalent to between five and seven dollars, an amount that is insufficient even to purchase a carton of eggs, which costs 3,000 pesos. Many live in extreme poverty without adequate access to medications or medical care.
"Let the party and the government come here; they will see my father here. Enough of the disrespect that exists in this municipality," concluded the family member in the video, demanding a response from the authorities who, at the time of the recording, were noticeably absent.
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