Unprecedented videos expose Cuban prison protest; inmates decry hunger, dictatorship
.jpg "A screenshot of a video of a protest in Canaleta prison, in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba.")
Unprecedented videos coming out of a high-security prison in Cuba have shown, possibly for the first time, inmates staging a protest against their living conditions and shouting anti-government slogans, providing both a previously unseen view inside of Cuba’s secretive penal system and another example of the population’s growing discontent with the regime in Havana.
The videos were taken in the Canaleta prison in Ciego de Avila, in central Cuba, on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. They were shared on social media by the former political prisoner and prominent opposition figure Jose Daniel Ferrer, who was released and sent into exile in Miami last year.
Two non-governmental organizations monitoring Cuban prisons and political prisoners, Spain-based Prisoners Defenders and the Mexico-based Cuban Prisons Documentation Center, also reported on the protest.
Some of the videos appear to have been recorded at night, with little light. Though the people are not clearly visible, inmates are heard shouting “Freedom,” “Down with the dictatorship,” “Down with communism” and “Down with Fidel and Raúl.”
“That’s the sound of freedom,” a man appearing to be the one recording the video said. A person is heard yelling, “Killers, you are starving people to death.” Someone else is heard shouting, “Long live the United States.”
One of the videos shows a group of men celebrating in a lighted hall, with barred cells on each side. In videos shot in the morning, the cage-like iron bars structure where the inmates live can be seen more clearly.
Cuba’s prisons are run by the Interior Ministry and Cuban authorities do not allow independent monitoring of the facilities. Over the years, political prisoners who have been released have described overcrowding, lack of food and medicine and poor sanitary conditions, as well as mistreatment and even torture by the Interior Ministry officers.
After their release, protesters detained for participating in the July 2021 anti-government protests in Cuba said they were subject “to serious abuses in prison, including beatings, solitary confinement and lack of medical care,” a Human Rights Watch report said last year.
The Cuban Prisons Documentation Center has documented 116 deaths in prisons between 2023 and 2025.
But images of the inside of the facilities are extremely rare.
The Miami Herald could not independently verify the videos. Ferrer told the Herald he received the images and audios from political prisoners and other inmates inside the facility who recorded them with smuggled phones after bribing prison guards.
Protests like this have “happened many times, but never with images,” Ferrer said.
He added that he had lost communication with inmates and relatives who were still sending him information on Thursday morning, likely because Cuban authorities blocked connectivity in the area.
In an audio of a phone call, published by Ferrer and Prisoners Defenders, an inmate who identified himself as Orlando Almenares Reyes, a political prisoner who is serving a 30-year sentence at the Canaleta prison, accused of killing a senior military official, explained how the protest started and the crackdown that followed.
“The prison is in riot mode right now,” he said. “They’re firing rubber bullets and pepper spray at us inside the cells. The prison riot is due to hunger and mistreatment by the guards, and because we don’t want this government, we don’t want the Cuban president [Miguel Díaz-Canel] who doesn’t respond to the needs of our people.”
Ferrer said his sources inside the prison told him the protesters managed to block some doors during the protest. In a second call, Almenares Reyes said the guards broke in and had taken some of the protesters to the prison courtyard and beat them.
Videos the inmates took on Thursday morning from inside their cells showed heavily armed special troops, wearing anti-riot gear, standing and smoking outside. At least one can be seen with a police dog.
Ferrer, who is the coordinator of the group Patriotic Union of Cuba, known as UNPACU, started a hunger strike on Thursday in solidarity with political prisoners in Cuba and in particular with Roilán Álvarez Rensoler, an UNPACU activist who has been on a hunger strike for 20 days at a prison in Holguín in eastern Cuba.
Amid a worsening economic crisis, protests have become increasingly common in Cuba, where the population has taken to the streets to bang pots and pans to protest against the government and the hardships they have been enduring, including daily blackouts.
This story was originally published February 19, 2026 at 5:35 PM.