Havana/Yaniuska Machado, murdered in the Las Mercedes neighborhood of the Bartolomé Masó municipality of Granma, is the most recent case of feminicide recorded in Cuba. The information indicates that the crime was committed by his romantic partner, although what is known has only been spread, this Thursday, via social networks. Neither the independent platforms have confirmed it nor the authorities have given any news so far.
The same thing happened with Mileidys Dueñas Pérez. Last Monday, the body of the woman, who had been missing for several days, was found, dismembered, in the San Juan y Martínez municipality, in the province of Pinar del Río. According to testimonies published on Facebook, she was murdered by her husband in an act of extreme violence, and her remains were buried in the patio of the house. Exhumed by the authorities, she was buried that same afternoon and buried in the afternoon. The victim was a native of Pilotos, Consolación del Sur, close sources confirmed to CyberCuba.
With these crimes there are three femicides so far in 2026. According to the registry of 14ymediolast year closed with 42 cases of feminicide, a figure built from complaints and monitoring by independent organizations and activists, in the absence of official data. In Cuba there is no transparent state registry that allows the exact magnitude of these crimes to be accurately measured.
The preliminary annual report of the Tense Wings Observatory corresponding to 2025 indicated that more than 90% of the murders of women were committed by people close to the victims, mainly couples or ex-partners, and the majority occurred in domestic spaces, with the predominant use of knives, which shows violence in intimate environments. Young and adult women accounted for the largest number of victims and in more than 60% of the cases there were dependent people in their care, which multiplies the social impact of each crime. The report also warns about the under-reporting of sexual violence, documents dozens of disappearances and places femicides within a structural crisis marked by economic precariousness, lack of state protection and absence of comprehensive public policies, which reinforces the urgency of prevention, transparency and effective care for victims.
90% of murders of women were committed by people close to the victims, mainly partners or ex-partners
Various studies currently place Cuba among the countries with the highest rates of feminicide in Latin America, with 1.4 murders per 100,000 womena figure that confirms the structural severity of the problem and the urgency of having reliable public statistics.
The persistence of these crimes has led organizations and activists to reiterate their demands to the State. These include the approval of a comprehensive law against gender violence, the creation of safe shelters for women at risk, the implementation of effective protection protocols and greater transparency in the publication of official data.
In recent months some institutional measures have been announced. In Havana it was recently inaugurated a guidance and counseling office for victims of sexist violence, promoted by the National Organization of Collective Law Firms with the support of the Canadian Embassy and the United Nations Population Fund. In addition, a national registration and monitoring system was approved and an official campaign focused on prevention was presented.
However, relatives of the victims and activists consider that these actions remain insufficient, since neither a reduction in cases nor a comprehensive response to the sustained increase in sexist violence in the country has been achieved.
