A Cuban reported in the Facebook group "Santa Clara in Snapshots" the serious state of deterioration and vandalism affecting the city's cemetery, accompanying her post with photographs that show graves with damaged headstones, moisture stains, lichens, plastic bottles, and accumulated trash.
"Visiting the cemetery for personal reasons is difficult, but it is even harder when you see the level of decay and vandalism in our final resting place," wrote Gretel Martínez Castañeda, the author of the post, whose publication sparked an avalanche of testimonies from neighbors and relatives of the deceased who described an even graver situation than what the images show.
Among the comments, Lupe Fernandez reported that the family mausoleum was vandalized, stating that "the cover's rings and the letters of the deceased, all made of bronze, were stolen, along with the glass and the decorative Madonna."
Nelida Morffi reported a similar robbery: "In my family's mausoleum, they stole the bracelets and the name. The family does not take care or provide any oversight; it is complete neglect."
An anonymous participant recounted that she went to the cemetery to find her great-grandmother's grave but couldn't locate it: "I asked at the office and they gave me the address, but I never found the place. Thousands of graves had no names or they were faded, many were broken—such terrible deterioration. I left the place feeling sad because I wanted to visit where my great-grandmother's remains are, and in the end, I was unable to find them."
Rosangel Rojo warned about an especially critical situation: "Near the mausoleum, in the ossuaries, the deterioration is critical; there are remains on the floor in large quantities."
Dayami Pumpum reported seeing more than ten scavenger birds eating something inside the premises, and stated that was "the only reason I didn't bury my mom" there.
Maggie Iza pointed to mass emigration as an aggravating factor: "Most of the families who own the vaults no longer live in Cuba and have no one to maintain them. With theft and corruption, everything is destroyed, and they do not even respect the dead."
The main cemetery of Santa Clara, known as the General Cemetery “San Juan de Dios”, is a site of historical and heritage value proposed as a Local Monument.
However, its deterioration is not recent: as early as February 2020, its state of neglect was documented along with that of the Las Villas funeral home, and in August 2021 it was expanded due to the increase in deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted the pressure on an already declining infrastructure.
The case of Santa Clara is not isolated. In April of this year, the Vicente García cemetery in Las Tunas reached a point of collapse that forced state burials to be suspended.
In February, profanation and neglect was documented in another municipal cemetery. In September 2025, the San Rafael cemetery in Guantánamo was reported to have cracked graves, illegible tombstones, and corroded marbles.
At the end of 2025, the regime promised to rehabilitate crematories and funeral homes in Havana, a promise that has had no visible impact on the rest of the country, where the state-run media had already acknowledged the chaos in wakes in Mayabeque in July of that year.
"If the living are abandoned, just imagine," summed up the user Francisbel Camps with bitter irony.
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