The Cuban Prison Documentation Center indicated that the causes of Yoleisy Oviedo Rodríguez’s death are unknown.
14ymedio, Madrid, 12 February 2025 — Yoleisy Oviedo Rodríguez, who was serving a sentence in the Western Women’s Correctional Facility, known as El Guatao, in Havana, for participating in one of the protests that occurred on the island in October 2022, died this Tuesday in prison. The Cuban Prison Documentation Center (CDPC) confirmed the news, although it indicated the causes of death are unknown.
The organization echoed comments on social media that claimed that Oviedo Rodríguez “had health problems that were not promptly attended to.” At least until yesterday afternoon, CDPC reported, the family had not been able to see the body.
“With deep sorrow, we confirm the death of political prisoner Yoleisy Oviedo Rodríguez in the El Guatao Forced Labor Camp,” the NGO wrote on its social networks. “Her only ’crime’ was raising her voice in a peaceful protest that occurred in Güines (Mayabeque).”
“With deep sorrow, we confirm the death of political prisoner Yoleisy Oviedo Rodríguez in the El Guatao Forced Labor Camp”
The NGO also regretted that “the effects of the detention of mothers do not end with them,” but extend to their children: “Yoleisy was the mother of a 12-year-old adolescent at the time of her arrest. The separation will now be final.”
Oviedo Rodríguez was one of hundreds of people who took to the streets on October 10, 2022 – a significant date because it was the day the wars of independence began – in several Cuban municipalities, in the midst of relentless blackouts. The banging of pots and pans demanding the return of electricity, in municipalities of Mayabeque such as Bejucal, San José de las Lajas, Güines, Nueva Paz or Jaruco, as well as other towns in Villa Clara, Camagüey, Las Tunas, Holguín and Santiago de Cuba, were mixed with cries for freedom .
In Güines, where Oviedo Rodríguez demonstrated, one of the most notorious protests took place. The demonstrators closed a street and burned three garbage containers. “Things got pretty ugly,” a local resident told 14ymedio. “You couldn’t see much, but there was shouting: ‘turn on the power, pinga (dick),’ ‘Diaz-Canel singao [mother fucker],’ and many more outrageous things,” said the man, who said that the police arrived with “a truck of special troops and they couldn’t get off.” According to his account, a mob of people with machetes in hand was waiting for them, throwing stones and glass jars with excrement at the officers.
“You couldn’t see much, but there was shouting: ‘turn on the power, pinga (dick),’ ‘Diaz-Canel singao [mother fucker],’ and many more outrageous things”
The Cuban Prison Documentation Center stated in its communication that in just 48 hours, they have recorded four deaths in prison. “So far this year, there are already 12,” they added. Last December, the same NGO reported at least seven prisoners who died in the custody of the authorities during last November.
According to the report, two of these deaths, that of political prisoner Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas and that of Raúl Clejer Steris, were accompanied by allegations of violence. The other five deceased were an inmate named Maikel, in the Cuba Sí prison, and four prisoners from the Quivicán prison (Mayabeque), whose identities are unknown. All of them, the organization reported, “died due to a combination of poor medical care, poor nutrition and terrible prison conditions.”
In December, Jorge Luis Torres Vaillant died after 28 days with a fever without receiving the medical assistance he requested, in the Boniato prison in Santiago de Cuba.
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