Ledisvannielis Acosta Echavarría was stabbed in her home in Centro Habana by her partner.
14ymedio, Havana, 18 August 2025 — The body of 19-year-old Ledisvannielis Acosta Echavarría was found in the bathroom of her house, located on Calle Amistad, between San José and Barcelona, in the Havana municipality of Centro Habana. The Alas Tensas Gender Observatory (OGAT) confirmed the event on Monday through its social networks.
The crime occurred on Tuesday, August 12 and, according to neighbors in the area, the attacker was seen trying to sell her pet before turning himself over to the police around eight o’clock at night. The perpetrator, also a very young man, stated that he was under the influence of drugs at the time of the murder.
The murder of Acosta Echavarría adds to a particularly bloody cycle. The young woman became the youngest victim of the femicides recorded this month.
Violence against women affects the entire country
With this case, 14ymedio counts 24 femicides in Cuba so far in 2025. In August alone, four women have lost their lives in similar circumstances.
The records of this newspaper and feminist platforms show that violence against women affects the entire country. Holguín tops the list with four confirmed femicides. It is followed by Havana and Camagüey, with three victims each. There are two cases in each of Ciego de Ávila, Sancti Spíritus, Granma and Santiago de Cuba, while at least one such murder has been documented in Pinar del Río, Cienfuegos, Matanzas, Las Tunas and Artemisa.
The dispersion of the events shows that almost no province is exempt from a phenomenon that feminist organizations call a national emergency. The lack of official data and effective prevention protocols aggravate the picture.
Not all murders of women in the context of a robbery are classified as femicides.
On August 4, Mailenis Blanco Amor, 47, was murdered in the town of Puerta de Golpe, in the municipality of Consolación del Sur. Three unknown men, posing as policemen to break into her house and rob her, ended her life. Both Alas Tensas and Yo Sí Te Creo en Cuba emphasize that, although not all murders of women in the context of a robbery are classified as femicides, in this case “gender bias is evident,” since the aggressors waited for the victim to be alone and applied disproportionate violence against her.
A day later, on August 5, another crime occurred in the city of Holguín. Milagros Batista Estévez, 56, was killed by her ex-partner in her home in the Alex Urquiola neighborhood. According to reports from feminist platforms, the victim had filed multiple prior complaints against her attacker, but police authorities had not adopted any effective protective measures. Batista, a mother of two grown children and grandmother to several grandchildren, was well-known in her community, which was shocked by the incident and the institutional inaction.
The 72-hour deadline required to officially report a missing person puts women victims of gender-based violence at greater risk.
The third victim in August was Bárbara Elena Tejería Magdaleno, also 56, a resident of Calabazar, Boyeros municipality, Havana. On August 11, she was attacked with a machete by her partner, who denied having seen her for days. Bárbara Elena’s body was found three days later in a vacant lot in the Las Cañas neighborhood. The attacker took his own life shortly afterward. Her case reignited the debate over the 72-hour deadline required to officially report a missing person, a protocol that, according to activists, puts women victims of domestic violence at greater risk.
Neither the Federation of Cuban Women nor other state institutions have offered a public response to these crimes, despite the growing social alarm they provoke. Independent observers warn that the lack of effective recognition of femicide in the Cuban Penal Code is reflected in the lack of prevention policies, the lack of protection for victims, and the lack of transparency in official statistics.
The state’s response is limited to prosecuting the aggressors and issuing “exemplary sentences.”
These organizations also denounce that there is no network of shelters for women at risk, nor specialized helplines that operate systematically throughout the country. The state response is limited, in most cases, to prosecuting the aggressors and issuing “exemplary sentences.”
The four victims of August share common elements: solitude in the face of their attackers, a lack of institutional protection, and the extreme violence inflicted on them. From murders committed by resentful ex-partners to those perpetrated in the context of robbery, the common denominator is the use of excessive force against women in vulnerable situations.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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