How the Cuban State Represses Women Who Dissent
“They Want Us Silent”
By Raul Medina Orama (El Toque)
HAVANA TIMES – Since July 11, 2021, Yenisey Taboada Ortíz is a different person from who she used to be. Her days pass between posting videos on Facebook to denounce the abuses against her imprisoned son, protester Duannis Dabel Leon Taboada, or searching for food and hygiene products to fill a bag she will bring him—when she is not forbidden from visiting—at Combinado del Este prison. That’s where the young man is serving 14 years for having participated in the social uprising four years ago. Yenisey must also continue caring for the rest of her family, despite the emotional and physical harm caused by years of State Security harassment, arbitrary detentions and threats from the authorities.
“I always try to give the best of myself as a mother, but sometimes things get out of my hands,” she tells El Toque, as if she should be the one apologizing—rather than a State that demands total obedience and punishes critical voices.
“I’m amazed at myself. I never thought I would be able to gather so much strength to turn a pain that tears me apart into the voice and eyes of my son, and to never fall silent despite the arbitrariness.”
Yenisey is not an exception in the system imposed by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) for decades. Duannis’s mother is part of a pattern of human rights violations described in a new Amnesty International report: “They want us silent, but we keep resisting: authoritarian practices and state violence against women in Cuba.”
“I have suffered all kinds of harassment, detentions, threats, hate rallies, surveillance, I have been marginalized, mocked, but what I fear most is not being able to look my daughters in the eyes tomorrow and tell them I could have done more,” said Yenisey.
Johanna Cilano, Amnesty International’s Caribbean researcher, told this outlet that one of the most notable gender-based patterns analyzed in the report 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 denounces that women activists, human-rights defenders, and journalists in Cuba are subjected to differentiated repression in which the State uses family ties, private life, economic dependency, sexuality, and appearance as tools of control, intimidation, and punishment.
According to the expert, the investigation took into account 52 testimonies about events that occurred between 2014 and 2025.
Other cases highlighted by Amnesty International are those of journalist Luz Escobar, writer María Matienzo, artist Camila Lobon, and activist Carolina Barrero—all of whom went into exile after being persecuted in Cuba for their independent work and for criticizing those in power.
The regime versus mothers and human-rights defenders
The “authoritarian practices” documented, explains Johanna Cilano, include “arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, improper surveillance, violations of the right to a fair trial, and criminalization in the defense of due process. But this report particularly highlights within these practices an aggravated pattern of gender-based state violence suffered by activists, human-rights defenders, and journalists.”
According to Amnesty International, state violence against women who dissent also takes the form of “direct threats to the safety and physical integrity of their daughters and sons, threats of imprisonment and criminalization of other family members; threats involving the custody and care of minors under their responsibility, with summonses to the Ministry of the Interior’s juvenile department for activist mothers.”
Additionally, Cilano adds, “in the case of mothers and wives of people imprisoned for political reasons, who are critical, there are denied prison visits and refusals to receive medications or food for their children—affecting not only the incarcerated person, but also their families, among other mechanisms of pressure and punishment against human-rights defenders.”
Alina Bárbara López, 60, — historian, essayist, and editor of independent media — has faced judicial proceedings in recent years for her civic and peaceful activism. She has also suffered arbitrary and violent detentions to prevent her from demonstrating in public spaces.
“The Cuban Police (including its women officers) is misogynist. And State Security even more so,” she told El Toque.
“And they don’t only show gender bias, but also contempt for people’s ages. At times they have told me: ‘but at your age, how can you act this way?’ As if being a certain age should mean apathy or conformism!”
From the harassment by Interior Ministry agents and pro-government supporters, Alina Barbara Lopez has learned one thing clearly: “they always try to use those misogynist mechanisms and age to discredit and discourage—but they haven’t succeeded with me.”
For decades, official propaganda has promoted a narrative of supposed equality and rights guaranteed by “the Revolution” through the para-state Federation of Cuban Women, which erases the experiences of the regime’s victims, even beyond the island.
On this point, during the press conference presenting Amnesty’s report, writer Maria Matienzo reflected: “Discussing gender-based violence in Cuba, from a political standpoint, has been a taboo that has haunted activists and journalists and has left us unprotected and tremendously isolated in the region and the world. Once you enter the Cuban repressive mechanism, there isn’t a single area of our lives the repression does not reach — it impacts our families, our bodies, and our psychological well-being.”
Matienzo also pointed out the “structural racism the regime refuses to acknowledge,” which contributes to state violence being especially brutal against Black and poor women.
Among the institutions identified as pillars of the repressive system against women, Cilano names State Security, official social organizations — “especially the Federation of Cuban Women” — the National Revolutionary Police, and the Ministry of the Interior.
“As for the laws, we show that there is a restrictive regulation of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. The Criminal Code maintains vague offenses, contempt, ‘resistance, public disorder, propaganda against the constitutional order, and foreign financing, used to criminalize dissent, as has been customary for the last 60 years. There are also discretionary regulations regarding surveillance and access to personal data,” Cilano notes.
This legal framework has been criticized by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), various UN special procedures, and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which in 2024 warned of “extreme responses” by the Cuban State to protests and its use of laws to persecute women who express criticism.
The Amnesty International researcher also said: “We are insisting to the Cuban State on the need to recognize the work of human-rights defenders, to repeal vague provisions that enable arbitrariness in criminal proceedings. They must stop subjecting activists, defenders, and journalists to entrenched authoritarian practices and to gender-based state violence; and commit to a comprehensive law against gender-based violence that meets international standards: prompt, thorough, and timely investigation, transparency, verifiable data, special protections for defenders, and guarantees of access to justice, reparation, and non-repetition.”
Alina Barbara Lopez recounts what dissent has meant in that oppressive environment: “It has brought consequences of various kinds, from psychological depression, physical injury from being beaten by the Police, and also certain professional backlash, like when I was expelled from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.”
What can be done in the face of Cuban state violence?
Amnesty International recommends that UN mechanisms, the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union, and the member states of those international bodies maintain constant monitoring of the human-rights situation in Cuba. They should also demand that Havana fully cooperate and grant access to human-rights protection mechanisms, including visits by various rapporteurs committed to supporting and publicly backing independent civil society.
Furthermore, Cilano adds, “they should support civil society in exile with resources, visibility, protection from the regime’s reprisals, and proactively advocate for people detained in the context of peaceful demonstrations or for reporting rights violations, even if they do not belong to traditional activism or organized civil society.”
Johanna Cilano noted, “it is important that the member countries of the European Union — and the association of nations — use their channels of communication with the Cuban government to keep the situation of women human-rights defenders and gender-based violence as a priority on their common political agenda.”
At times, international visibility is the most effective protection for Cuban women harassed by the State. As with any abuser, Cuba’s totalitarian regime does not want to be exposed as violent; it prefers its practices to remain silent.
“I am extremely grateful for the support of many people inside and outside of Cuba, of Cuban independent organizations and media, of people of different political positions—left, right—who have been attentive to my case, as well as Amnesty International,” says Alina Barbara Lopez.
Solidarity, she concludes, “has in some way tied the hands of those in power, preventing them from lashing out as we know they can.”
Meanwhile, Yenisey Taboada sends a message to the mothers of Cuba: “Silence kills, pain destroys, wears you down, and it is not healthy to keep quiet. We cannot die with so much pain inside. We must free ourselves, shout, demand our rights, and protect those children we carried in our wombs.”
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.