The Cuban dictatorship reached a new historic high of repression: 1,372 people were being held in custody for political reasons as of October 1, 2026, according to the verified records of the NGO Prisoners Defenders, reported this Monday by Infobae.
The figure surpasses the previous record of 1,339 political prisoners recorded at the end of August, published by Prisoners Defenders on September 10, and consolidates an almost uninterrupted escalation: the organization counted 1,179 cases in October 2025, 1,260 in April 2026, and 1,327 in July.
Among the 1,372 are 40 minors incarcerated or undergoing active criminal proceedings, counted by their age at the time of their arrest, even if some have reached the age of majority during their confinement.
The figure of minors does not include dozens of young people who exited the registry in previous months after fully serving their sentences.
Another fact that underscores the scale of the repression: 158 women are included in the list, approximately 12% of the total verified, many of whom have been sentenced for participating in protests or spreading criticisms of the regime on digital platforms.
The Cuban judicial system employs 76 provisions of the Penal Code to support accusations and often aggregates multiple charges against the same individual to increase the penalties.
The most common crime is public disorder, present in 577 cases. This is followed by contempt (382 cases), assault (350), sedition (214), and sabotage (125).
This last charge is particularly serious: in several cases, civilians accused of sabotage have been tried by military courts, a practice that human rights organizations consider an additional violation of procedural guarantees.
The peaks of new arrests in the past year occurred in April 2026, with 50 new cases, and in June, with 44, periods that coincided with an escalation of blackouts and citizen protests over the lack of electricity and water.
Repression also has a familial dimension documented by the NGO: mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, and fathers and sons have simultaneously faced imprisonments, trials, or restrictive measures on their freedom.
A recent example: Ivisleivi Castellano Puig was arrested in Havana during a peaceful protest, and that same day her son Antuan de Jesús Caballero Castellano, 23 years old, was arrested for painting graffiti with the phrase "Long Live a Free Cuba."
The health situation of several political prisoners is also alarming. Ana Ibis Tristá Padilla, sentenced to 14 years, reported from the women’s prison in Las Tunas that she suffers from chronic asthma, kidney failure, and daily pain: “I can barely walk,” she wrote in a letter disseminated by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights.
Another emblematic case is that of Wilber Aguilar Bravo, who traveled over 300 kilometers from Havana to the Nieves Morejón prison in Sancti Spíritus to visit his son Walnier Luis Aguilar Rivera —sentenced to 12 years for the protests on July 11— and was not allowed to enter: he had been 84 days without seeing him.
The 158th anniversary of the Grito de Yara, commemorated on October 10, found Cuba with more political prisoners than ever, while the regime speaks of reforms and the population endures an unprecedented energy crisis.
Prisoners Defenders noted in its August report that "political repression is not limited to the individual: it turns family ties into instruments of pressure, intimidation, and punishment."
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