A report by elTOQUE, authored by journalist Marleidy Muñoz and published this Monday, documents at least 89 deaths of young Cuban recruits during Active Military Service over the past decade, with an alarming increase concentrated between 2022 and 2025 that reveals a pattern of impunity and institutional silence.
Between 2017 and 2021, 15 deaths were documented —an average of three per year— while between 2022 and 2025, the number rose to 70, nearly six times more. Only between 2021 and 2022 did the cases increase from five to 19, a rise of 280%.
The causes are varied: 33 accidents and 31 cases of self-inflicted death account for 72% of the records. Ten cases correspond to medical negligence or illness.
In at least nine cases classified as deaths by natural causes, families suspect cover-ups of possible homicides. At least six of the deceased were under 18 years old—considered children by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Cuba—and all documented minors died in the same manner.
Two collective tragedies account for 13 of the 89 cases. The first was the fire at the Supertanker Base in Matanzas on August 5, 2022, where four 19-year-old recruits lost their lives. The second occurred on January 7, 2025, at the Melones munitions depot in the municipality of Rafael Freyre, Holguín, where nine recruits died in a series of explosions.
The sister of one of the deceased in Melones, Daliha González, recounted her experience following the tragedy: «[The military] kept saying they were going to enter the area to try to save those who were still alive or recover the bodies. They never did. They lied to us time and again».
The remains were not recovered by the authorities; according to González, “the bodies were found this year in a state of decomposition, when other young people entered the same tunnels trying to find weapons and materials that had been left there after the explosion.” By the end of the report, his family was still waiting for the return of his brother's body.
The regime's response to each death has been systematically silence. Of 46 families consulted, only eight reported that any official investigation took place, and in no case were the circumstances clarified or responsibilities determined.
The lawyer Raudiel Peña Barrios, from Cubalex, warns that "when the State deprives a citizen of their freedom or subjects them to its absolute control, as happens in Military Service, it automatically assumes the role of guarantor."
Families demanding justice have faced reprisals. The father of Orlando Lago Vega —the recruit shot while sleeping in a military unit in June 2020— was sentenced in 2023 to one year and six months in prison for insisting that the case be investigated.
Félix Alfredo González, whose son Annier died in 2021 at the age of 18, has been documenting these deaths for years and has faced repression for it. "There is no justice for us or for them," he states.
The regime has maintained before international bodies that recruitment is voluntary. In June 2022, an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: “In Cuba, children are not and will not be recruited.” This statement contradicts the current Cuban legislation in effect since 1963, which mandates that males aged 17 to 28 must serve for one to two years under the threat of criminal prosecution.
The report from the Cuban Observatory for Citizen Auditing published in July raises the toll to 97 deaths and disappearances of recruits between 2001 and spring 2026, concluding that "the documented number is a minimum, not a maximum." Just in September 2026, reports of three new deaths have emerged that elTOQUE is working to verify.
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