The platforms Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba (YSTCC) and the Observatorio de Género de Alas Tensas (OGAT) launched on November 25th the 'Don't forget me' campaign‘, with the aim of making visible the disappearances in Cuba - especially of women and girls - as well as the absence of search protocols by the State.
This initiative was made public on November 25, on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, highlighting this scourge from which Cuba is not exempt.
The organizations also seek to raise public awareness about missing persons in Cuba, especially women and girls. To date, OGAT underreports the number of missing persons. 22 active missing persons alerts.
The names of the missing persons on active alert are: Esperanza Cabrera Melvin, Amarilis Muñiz Navarrete, Lali Paola Moliner, Karildi Caridad Marín, Maydeleisis Rosales, Damaris Ricardo Frómetas, Beisy Moraima Pedroso Ramírez, Jianis Sánchez Páez, Felicia Gómez Díaz, Claudia Cárdenas, Mabel García Corrales, Esther Pau Alfonso, María Karla Quiala, Leonor Isaac Campos (“Nori”), Doraiky Águila Vázquez, Maileivys Martín, Noguella Lezcano, Alicia María Montes de Oca, Yanara Fernández Méndez, Roberto Torres Zoza, Balbino Lombillo, and Rafael Vice Cans.
According to their official statement, the campaign will run for 16 days, until December 10, International Human Rights Day.
During this time, they will "disseminate content on social media about disappearances on the island, including testimonies from families and relevant information from experts, and will offer practical resources that civil society can activate in the face of a disappearance with the aim of promoting public conversation on the subject," they add.
As a closing event for their campaign, they have called for a vigil for missing persons in Madrid next Monday, December 8th. The exact location and time will be announced soon on the platforms' official social media accounts.
Regarding the campaign, Among the aforementioned expert opinions, the one that stands out is that of lawyer and executive director of Cubalex, Laritza Diversent, who we share next:
When I began studying disappearances in Cuba, I never imagined the pain I would find hidden beneath so much silence. As I progressed in my research, I understood that disappearing in my country is not just a physical or administrative phenomenon: it is a collective wound, a void woven by fear, censorship, and denial.
I discovered that there are families who have spent decades searching for their children, siblings, or parents without ever receiving an answer; that many of those who left for the sea or embarked on migratory routes remain missing, and that the Cuban state has never counted them nor searched for them. That discovery changed me. I felt that each untold story was a form of repeated death, and that the official silence had turned disappearance into a policy of oblivion.
Since 1959, disappearing in Cuba has had many faces. In the early years of the Revolution, many were detained without registration, executed without trial, or disappeared after attempting to flee the country. In the following decades, migration became an escape valve for those who could no longer endure repression and poverty.
Instead of protecting its citizens, the state criminalized leaving the country and equated migration with treason. In the 1980s, during the Mariel boatlift, the government allowed more than 125,000 people to leave the island, including common prisoners, people with mental health issues, and dissidents, along with entire families. In the 1990s, the desperation of the Special Period drove thousands of rafters to the sea in makeshift boats. Since then, the sea has become a nameless grave for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Cubans. No one knows how many died. There are no records, no official lists, no reliable figures. Their bodies were lost at sea, and their names vanished from the state archives.
Cuban exodus and lives lost on the migration route
In recent years, the phenomenon has taken on a new magnitude. Since 2021, more than 420,000 Cubans have left the island, the highest number in six decades. According to Reports, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had 224,607 encounters with Cuban migrants and asylum seekers in fiscal year 2022. Thousands more attempted to cross the border without success. The International Organization for Migration estimates that at least 368 Cubans died or disappeared at sea between 2020 and 2024. But even those figures are conservative. Cuba Archive reports They record 169 extrajudicial killings and 24 enforced disappearances linked to attempts to leave the country since 1959, although they acknowledge a massive underreporting. The U.S. Coast Guard only intercepts half of the boats detected; the rest are lost without a trace. Each boat can carry between five and twenty people. The arithmetic of horror leaves us confronted with thousands of lives erased by state indifference and the sea.
Behind every crossing lies a pattern of omission and violence. Cuban border guards, instead of rescuing those who take to the sea, have been accused of ramming boats or shooting at migrants. The authorities never publish the names of those repatriated or the dead. Families are left with nothing but silence: no calls, no records, no answers. Behind this silence operates a closed military and judicial structure, where military jurisdiction covers up the state's responsibilities. Many of these cases could be classified as extrajudicial executions, but they are never investigated. The bodies end up buried in mass graves or simply disappear at sea. And meanwhile, the official discourse insists that “there are no disappeared persons in Cuba,” repeating a dogma that has erased entire generations from the national memory.
Disappearances also occur on land
Disappearances don't only happen at sea. They also occur on land, while traveling through Central America, in the Darién jungle, in the deserts of Mexico, or in immigration detention centers. Thousands of Cubans have disappeared along these routes. Women, children, and entire families disappear without their names appearing in any records.
According to data from the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), the National Migration Institute (INM), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the number of Cubans registered with Mexican immigration authorities—either as asylum seekers or detained in an irregular situation—rose from fewer than 500 in 2018 to more than 40,000 in 2023, reflecting an unprecedented increase in Cuban migration to Mexico. Most travel without consular protection or recognition of their humanitarian status. Many women migrate alone or with their young children, bearing the economic responsibility for their households. Along these routes, they are victims of... trafficking networks, Sexual exploitation or kidnapping. When they disappear, the Cuban authorities do nothing: they neither request information from transit countries nor collaborate in the search. This omission is not accidental; it is a policy.
Invisible disappearances within Cuba
Meanwhile, invisible disappearances are also occurring within the country: forced internment, arbitrary detentions, and cases of people who disappear after being arrested for political or social reasons. Families who report these disappearances are dismissed or silenced. The institutional response is usually the same: “They’ll turn up,” “They ran off with someone,” “They abandoned home.” These phrases, repeated by the police and official media, are not mere bureaucratic expressions; they are the language of denial. They transform disappearance into a personal decision and the victim into someone to blame for their own absence.
When it comes to women, the stigma is twofold.The state reduces them to “prostitutes,” “undisciplined,” or “irresponsible migrants.” Many of them were ensnared by trafficking networks linked to sex tourism or disappeared while trying to emigrate. In Cuba, the disappearance of women doesn't trigger searches, but rather prejudice.
As I analyzed the documents and testimonies, I understood that the State's silence serves a political function: to erase the responsibility of its institutions, to conceal crimes committed under its jurisdiction, and to preserve the image of an orderly and secure nation. In official discourse, migration is always blamed on the United States or the “illusions of capitalism.” Migrants are not victims, but rather “traitors,” “manipulated,” or “deceived by the enemy.” This narrative serves to deny the humanitarian crisis and to justify the lack of data. There are no public records of Cubans who have disappeared, either at sea or abroad. Nor are there legal mechanisms for families to report or search for their loved ones. The Civil Code only recognizes the figure of the “absent person,” a category designed for managing assets, not for searching for people. Disappearance, in legal terms, does not exist. And what does not exist cannot be investigated.
But reality contradicts the rhetoric. From 1959 to the present, Cuba has lost between 1.9 and 2.1 million inhabitants to emigration, almost a fifth of its population. Of these, no one knows how many disappeared at sea, in exile, or within their own homes. Each number is a gap in the collective memory. Each unregistered name is a story the State chose to erase. In the case of women, the situation is even more heartbreaking. The feminization of the exodus—more than 53% of those who emigrate—has multiplied disappearances linked to poverty, trafficking, and violence. Many are young Afro-Cuban women, single mothers, or women from eastern provinces who migrate first to Havana and then abroad. Their journey from the countryside to the city and from the country to other countries follows the same pattern: exclusion, criminalization, and silence. When they disappear, the State doesn't search for them; it judges them.
I've read reports about unidentified bodies in hospitals, about corpses buried without names in provincial cemeteries, about boats rammed by border guards, and about families who have been searching for years without answers. In all these cases, the constant is the same: the truth is hidden, and the pain is privatized. Mothers and fathers must search alone, afraid and without resources. Sometimes, they can't even legally declare their children missing because the law requires waiting a year without news. During that time, the State does nothing. Disappearance becomes a sentence of silence.
I understood then that the pain stems not only from loss, but also from denial. The Cuban state has transformed disappearance into an act of censorship: by not naming it, it perpetuates it. The families searching for their disappeared loved ones defy a power structure that punishes the truth. And I, reading their stories, felt the weight of that absence that has neither body nor grave. I discovered that behind every disappearance lies a web of omissions: a border guard who didn't rescue, a prosecutor who didn't investigate, a media outlet that didn't publish, a judge who didn't listen. I discovered that the Caribbean Sea is full of nameless dead and that the rivers of silence also flow within the island.
Today I know that disappearances in Cuba are not just a fact, but a system. A system of denial that permeates institutions, discourse, and national memory. The damage is not measured solely in lost bodies, but in the moral fracture of a society that has learned to live without answers. Each disappeared person represents a denied truth and a history torn from our country. That is why writing about them is also an act of mourning. It is my way of saying their names, even though the State has erased them. Because Behind every silence there is a life that deserves to be told, and behind every life lost there is a truth that, sooner or later, will re-emerge from the sea.