Mailene Noguera, a former political prisoner who participated in the protests on July 11, 2021, in Batabanó, south of Havana, is facing a life-threatening situation after undergoing an oncology treatment filled with interruptions and shortages within the Cuban healthcare system, according to an urgent report by activist Carolina Barrero published this Thursday.
Noguera, who was 34 years old when she peacefully took to the streets to protest on July 11, was sentenced to four years of imprisonment and served her entire sentence. Upon her release in January 2025, she already had a palpable breast tumor.
Since then, her treatment has been a series of incomplete therapies: she received only five of the six cycles of preoperative chemotherapy recommended because the last drug was unavailable; she was given 17 of the 18 prescribed doses of immunotherapy, also due to a lack of the medication; and she was unable to receive any of the 15 indicated sessions of radiotherapy because the equipment was out of order.
Mailene herself, now 39 years old, describes it with a calmness that is striking: “Out of the six chemotherapy sessions, I was able to receive five because the last one was unavailable. Of the eighteen vaccines, I managed to get seventeen because the last one was also missing. And for the fifteen radiation treatments, I didn’t receive a single one because the machine was broken.”
She underwent a radical mastectomy approximately nine months ago. However, about three months ago, a new tumor developed on the surgical scar, which became abscessed and has grown to significant size, alarmingly worsening her health condition.
The activist dismisses the idea that what happened can be classified as mere negligence: "Negligence is a carelessness. This is a method. The very State that imprisoned her for protesting is the one that later provided her with incomplete, delayed treatment interrupted by a lack of medication and malfunctioning equipment. First, it took away four years of her freedom. Now it threatens to take the rest of her life."
Mailene is the mother of an 18-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son, and just a month ago she became a grandmother for the first time.
Your case falls into a documented pattern of medical neglect towards those who have been in the regime's prisons. Prisoners Defenders reported in September 2025 that 472 political prisoners in Cuba had serious health conditions without proper care. According to data from Justicia 11J from April 2026, at that time 338 individuals remained incarcerated specifically due to the events of 11J, out of a total of 775 political prisoners.
Mailene's situation adds an additional dimension: the neglect did not occur only during her imprisonment but continued after her release, within a public health system affected by chronic shortages of medications and the deterioration of equipment that characterize the structural crisis of the Island.
Human Rights Watch identified Mailene Noguera among the protesters arrested in Batabanó in October 2021, accused of public disorder. In January 2022, the prosecution requested six years and six months of imprisonment against her; she was sentenced to four.
"I almost never make personal appeals, but this time I am asking you to join a campaign to save a silent and immense heroine," Barrero wrote in making the accusation public.
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