Each one, from their own place, has influenced the public conversation or embodied a profound dimension of this turbulent year
14ymedio, Havana, December 24, 2025 — Every December, 14ymedio presents the faces that have stood out in Cuba during the year. Some reflect the face of power, others that of exhaustion or hope. Between blackouts, trials, hurricanes, viruses, and exoduses, the country hasn’t changed much, but the protagonists are different. This year, 2025, was, more than ever, a mosaic of crises and reinventions: politics showed its most cynical side; the eastern part of the island, devastated by Hurricane Melissa, revealed the country’s most vulnerable image; and on the margins of daily life, journalists, migrants, and athletes once again gave these months their own unique character
The 14 faces we present here defy easy categorization. There are officials who rose rapidly through the ranks, political prisoners whose resistance sustained many, and migrants who, even from afar, shape the island’s reality with their remittances, phone calls, and calls to action. Each, from their own unique position, has influenced the public discourse or embodied a profound dimension of this turbulent year.
These are faces that speak of decay—the deterioration of institutions, basic services, and family economies—but also of ingenuity and adaptability. Looking at them together is like peering into a snapshot of the country: some appear because of their exercise of power; others, because of the cost of confronting it. Some became visible by contributing to the crisis; others, by being victims of Cuba’s collapse.
Choosing them was not an act of sympathy or condemnation. Rather, it is about recognizing how these figures—diverse, contradictory, and distant from one another—decisively influenced the emotional and political climate of 2025.
Choosing them was not an act of sympathy or condemnation. Rather, it is about recognizing how these figures—diverse, contradictory, and distant from one another—decisively influenced the emotional and political climate of 2025. Among them are those who tried to maintain the framework of the State despite the evident erosion of its structures; those who paid for their dissent with imprisonment or forced exile; and those who made their way in sports, civic engagement, or social media.
2025 was the year of visible fractures: healthcare, electricity, food, and morale. It was also the year in which some voices managed to cut through the noise, from those who predicted endless blackouts to those who denounced abuses, including those who challenged the official narrative from exile or from a mobile phone. These faces, more than a list, form a map. Each one contributes a fragment of truth, a facet of the country that cannot be narrated from a single perspective.
Here, then, are the unwitting or chosen protagonists of a difficult and crucial year. Some will remain at the center of the stage in 2026; others will conclude their cycle this December. But all of them, without exception, leave an unmistakable mark on Cuba’s recent memory. Through them, the complete story can be told: the story of those who rule and the story of those who resist.
The 14 faces of 2025
1. Repressors returned to Cuba, Melody González
3. Laura Gil, the daughter of the minister who demanded transparency in her father’s trial
4. Yosvani Rossell García, the body as a form of denunciation
5. José Jasán Nieves, the totí [blackbird] of economic chaos
6. Inés María Chapman, the engineer who wants to bring order to chaos
7. Marta Elena Feito, the minister who denied poverty and ended up being devoured by it
8. Lázaro Guerra Hernández, the man of the blackouts
9. Tania Velázquez Rodríguez, president of Etecsa during the ‘tarifazo’ (price hike)
10. The students, who rose up against Etecsa were defeated
11. Leyanis Pérez, queen of the triple jump
12. Juan Reinaldo Pérez, the man who deepened the crisis of Cuban baseball
13. Generation Z in Cuba, neither silent nor submissive
14. Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, the power of the Castro lineage