The Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) is a nonviolent opposition organization in Cuba that brings together Cuban dissidents. It was founded on August 24, 2011, by José Daniel Ferrer García after he was released from prison in March 2011 and refused to leave the country.
Despite starting with only twelve people, today UNPACU has more than ten thousand affiliated activists and 122 cells. By 2017, they reported that there were 53 of their activists imprisoned in Cuba for political reasons.
UNPACU has representation in both the United States and the European Union
On the organization's website, it states, “UNPACU's activism is based on nonviolent resistance and disobedience, the same principle that has underpinned the so-called 'color revolutions,' whose axes of action were articulated by Gene Sharp.”
Recognized by Amnesty International since its inception, this movement has denounced the harassment, intimidation, and detentions that its members have suffered at the hands of the Cuban authorities.
As part of its growth and consolidation, UNPACU absorbed in 2013 the peaceful dissident organization FANTU, led by the well-known dissident journalist Guillermo Fariñas.
Among its objectives, the organization actively denounces the lack of civil liberties as well as the economic precariousness experienced on the island.
In January 2012, one of its members, the Cuban dissident Wilman Villar Mendoza, aged 31, died at the Juan Bruno Zayas Hospital in Santiago de Cuba after a 50-day hunger strike that he began in prison following a four-year sentence for contempt due to his participation in a peaceful protest.
