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Two young Cuban women were murdered by their ex-partners in the province of Sancti Spíritus within just a week, crimes that highlight the alarming rise in violence against women in Cuba, where 35 femicides have been confirmed in the first half of 2026.
The victims were identified as Liddiany Luis González and Zarahelga Pardo López, in a post on the Facebook page "My Steadfast Loyalty", associated with the Ministry of the Interior of Cuba (Minint).
According to the information, Liddiany had left the town of Guayos on a motorcycle, accompanied by her husband, and as they were traveling along kilometer 381 of the Central Highway, near La Trinchera, her ex-partner—who was evading justice—confronted them armed with a knife.
The woman attempted to escape by running, but she was caught by the attacker, who inflicted several fatal stab wounds. The man was arrested and placed at the disposal of the authorities, the report indicated.
The page of Nio reporting a crime, where this case was made public, reported that the attack occurred on Monday, June 22, and identified Davier Valdivia Santana as the presumed aggressor. Sources close to the victim disclosed to the content creator that she had reported to the authorities that her ex-partner was continuously harassing her.
The Gender Observatory of Alas Tensas (OGAT), an independent organization that has been documenting femicides in Cuba since 2019, launched a preliminary alert on Sunday regarding the case, marking it as a "possible femicide" that occurred on June 21, and requested information to confirm it.
Just a week after the brutal assault that took the life of Liddiany Luis González, another young woman from the same province lost her life at the hands of her ex-husband. The initial reports of the crime, which occurred in the early hours of June 29, surfaced on social media.
This Tuesday, the official profile "My Forged Loyalty" confirmed the tragic event. In the Carlos Roloff neighborhood of the city of Sancti Spíritus, Zarahelga Pardo López was killed by her ex-partner.
After the attack, the assailant inflicted a serious injury to his neck and was taken to the hospital, where he is reported to be in critical condition, according to the publication.
The page Nio reporting a crime revealed this Tuesday that the young woman who was killed was the mother of three children: two girls and a boy, and the alleged assailant was identified as José Luis Rivera, known by the alias "El Loco," according to information provided by family members and acquaintances of the victim.
Both cases reflect a predominant pattern in femicide violence in Cuba. A report from OGAT revealed that in 2025, 83.3% of femicides were committed by partners or ex-partners, 64.6% involved a knife, and 62.5% occurred in the home or immediate vicinity of the victim.
The fact that Liddiany's attacker was evading capture at the time of the assault also highlights serious failures in the tracking and monitoring mechanisms for aggressors by the authorities of the Cuban regime.
Sancti Spíritus already had a record in 2026: the first confirmed femicide of the year in Cuba was that of Magaly Aragón Aragón, a 59-year-old nurse found dead in a sugarcane field at the Las Mulas penitentiary camp in Jatibonico on January 6.
The profile of Minint "My tempered loyalty" acknowledged the crimes of Liddiany and Zarahelga with a plea to trust in justice and a call to "educate in respect, empathy, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts," without ever mentioning the word femicide. The official communication frames them as a social coexistence issue but avoids addressing the structural responsibility of the regime.
Cuba lacks a comprehensive law on gender-based violence and institutional shelters for women at risk. The State does not publish official statistics on feminicides and has not classified feminicide as an autonomous crime in the current Penal Code, where it is only listed as an aggravating factor.
According to the OGAT underreporting, in the first six months of 2026, 35 femicides were confirmed, a 112.5% increase compared to the same period in 2025, when 16 cases were documented.
Since 2019 until June of this year, the independent observatories OGAT and Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba (YSTCC) documented 350 femicides on the island.
Alas Tensas warned that "each feminicide reveals a life taken away, but also an institutional failure," and demanded that the regime stop "criminalizing activists and independent observatories that document these cases in the face of state silence."
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