Currently in Cuba, along with hunger, poverty, ill health, disease, criminality, and repression, suicides are on the rise
Cubanet, Luis Cino Álvarez, Havana, 17 March 2025 — Rare is the day we don’t hear of a suicide: someone of any sex or age who hanged or poisoned themselves, jumped off a bridge or rooftop, shot themselves, slit their wrists, set themselves ablaze, threw themselves under the wheels of a bus or truck.
At this time in Cuba, along with hunger, poverty, ill health, disease, criminality, and repression increase, suicides are on the rise.
According to official data, which are most likely conservative, the suicide rate in Cuba has ranged between 12 and 20 for every 100,000 persons.
According to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the suicide rate in Cuba is 14.11 for every 100,000 inhabitants. The worldwide average is 9.49, and 7.3 on the American continent.
According to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), in 2021 the suicide rate in Cuba was 16 per 100,000 inhabitants, and in 2022, 12.9 suicides.
In the neighboring Dominican Republic, the rate is almost half that: 6.3.
In 2015, ONEI stated that suicide was the tenth leading cause of death in Cuba. But in the last five years, with the country’s economic and social conditions worsening to extreme levels, the number of persons taking their own lives must have increased significantly.
The number of Cubans who die by suicide is surpassed only by deaths from traffic accidents, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.
In official reports (police, forensic, demographic, etc.), they avoid using the term “suicide.” So as not to admit the fact that so many Cubans (even among the elite, as was the case with Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart) are unhappy, stressed, and depressed enough to prefer death. In official Cuba—given as they are to euphemisms—they use a rather long one to refer to suicides: “death by intentionally self-inflicted injuries.”
Capable as they are of any absurdity in official circles, I don’t know if they also use that euphemism when there are no injuries, as in cases of poisoning, which are among the most common, especially among women, children, and adolescents.
Regarding the latter, the Statistical Health Yearbook revealed that suicides among minors between the ages of five and 18 rose from 18 in 2022 to 28 in 2023; and that among adolescents between the ages of 10 and 18, suicides increased from 31 to 34, making it the fourth leading cause of death in that age group. These are mostly due to bullying, family problems, and also, among those aged 16 to 18, to avoid compulsory military service.
If the authorities deem that the attempt to take one’s own life disrupts the public order and “civil peace,” the failed suicide is sent to prison. A military conscript who tried to kill himself is also put in jail. How can a draftee attempt to take his own life, which, like the means of production, information, and everything else, also belongs to the socialist state?
Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison
