A new Amnesty International report highlights gender-based state violence against female activists, human rights defenders, and journalists in Cuba. The document, based on 52 testimonies from 2014 to 2025, reveals repression patterns that instrumentalize motherhood and threaten families. Women like Yenisey Taboada have faced constant harassment for denouncing abuses against their imprisoned sons.
Since July 11, 2021, Yenisey Taboada Ortíz has spent her days posting videos on Facebook to denounce abuses against her son Duannis Dabel Leon Taboada, sentenced to 14 years at Combinado del Este prison for participating in that year's protests. Despite State Security harassment, arbitrary detentions, and threats, Yenisey cares for her family and seeks provisions for her son, though visits are sometimes forbidden. “I always try to give the best of myself as a mother, but sometimes things get out of my hands,” she told El Toque.
Amnesty International's report, titled “They want us silent, but we keep resisting: authoritarian practices and state violence against women in Cuba,” examines authoritarian practices like arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and improper surveillance, with a focus on gender-based violence. Johanna Cilano, Amnesty's Caribbean researcher, explains that a notable pattern is “the instrumentalization of motherhood to try to make these women human-rights defenders, activists, and journalists stop doing their work, stop participating in protests, or stop demanding their children’s freedom”.
The report cites cases such as journalist Luz Escobar, writer María Matienzo, artist Camila Lobon, and activist Carolina Barrero, who fled into exile after persecution. It includes direct threats to the safety of daughters and sons, denied prison visits, and refusals to deliver medications or food. Alina Bárbara López, a 60-year-old historian, has endured violent detentions and judicial proceedings. “The Cuban Police (including its women officers) is misogynist. And State Security even more so,” she states.
María Matienzo emphasizes that discussing gender-based violence in Cuba has been a taboo, affecting families, bodies, and psychological well-being, with structural racism exacerbating brutality against Black and poor women. Institutions like State Security, the Federation of Cuban Women, and the National Revolutionary Police perpetuate this, under a legal framework criticized by the IACHR, UN procedures, and CEDAW in 2024.
Amnesty recommends that the UN, OAS, and EU monitor the situation, demand cooperation from Havana, and support exiled civil society. International visibility protects these women, as Alina Bárbara López acknowledges: “It has in some way tied the hands of those in power”. Yenisey Taboada urges other mothers: “Silence kills, pain destroys... We must free ourselves, shout, demand our rights”.