Forced labor in Castro's prisons

By: Pedro Corzo - 30/10/2025

Guest columnist.
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The prisons in the Cuban penal system have clear instructions to make life as difficult as possible for inmates. And all the henchmen who serve in these facilities must be prepared for the most extreme acts of cruelty; among them, forcing those punished to endure cruel and inhumane work shifts.

This is a topic addressed in a recent report by the NGO Prisoners Defender, an entity based in Spain that carries out the difficult task of keeping us informed about Cuban political imprisonment; without forgetting the numerous prisoners of other categories that exist on the Island due to the injustices inherent in Castro's totalitarianism.

The report in question refers to “the alarming situation of forced labor in Cuban penitentiary centers, revealing and demonstrating, without leaving room for doubt, the painful and criminal situation of forced labor exercised by the State, for economic and punitive purposes on a total of 60,000 out of the 90,000 prison inmates and 37,458 sanctioned in open regime in the country.

The document details that “the laws in Cuba shamelessly and explicitly protect the forced labor of prisoners and those sentenced. The production of charcoal, agricultural work, tobacco farming, or sugarcane cutting under the most inhumane conditions of slavery, and the production obtained from such labor, is destined entirely for export, mainly to European countries such as, in this order, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Turkey.”

The document also confirms the historical complicity of Democratic Europe with the Cuban dictatorship, an incomprehensible relationship that can only be justified by the communist or fascist yearnings of some leaders of the old continent who, through the European Union, subsidize the island dictatorship, as the Cuban Resistance Assembly has denounced on numerous occasions.

Reading the valuable Prisoner Defender report inevitably leads to the Presidio Modelo on Isle of Pines, a prison where forced labor reached a level of squalor comparable to the labor camps of the Soviet and Chinese gulags, very close to the Nazi concentration camps.

The Isle of Pines Men's Prison was, in terms of forced labor, a center of experimentation that failed in its endeavor. The constant resistance of the prisoners and the heroism of those who stood up to the Camilo Cienfuegos Work Plan made the tyranny understand that it was obliged to close this bastion of resistance in order to achieve the control it desired, as former political prisoner Ramiro Gómez Barruecos stated in one of his lectures.

In the ominous slave labor plans, the Morejón Plan, which was experienced by, among others, the deceased Francisco “Paco” Talavera, as well as the Camilo Cienfuegos Plan, which is described in an excellent article by another former political prisoner, Roberto Jiménez, the evil of Castroism can be appreciated, because to the countless hours of labor must be added the murders, the maimed and the dementia of countless prisoners who were only fulfilling the duty of loving their country.

The sentences handed down by the Castro regime's prison system are very particular; one of them is the confiscation of the offender's property, including homes when both spouses have been sentenced. This has always created a desperate situation for the couple when they leave prison with nowhere to live, due to the chronic shortage of housing in the country. Furthermore, they always ensure that the prisoner serves their sentence as far away from their family as possible in a country where transportation is an ordeal.

However, it is forced labor, under inhumane conditions, that is the cruelest punishment. Long and grueling workdays, under constant surveillance and subjected to abuse and mistreatment, followed by an inevitable return to the solitude of prison, its only solace the anticipation of family visits, which can be suspended at the whim of a disgruntled guard. These are the norms of life for a prisoner in Cuba, regardless of whether they are a political prisoner or a common criminal.

To forced labor must be added hunger, which is far less painful than overcrowding, lack of medical care, or denial of water. But all of this is surpassed by the knowledge of the mistreatment and abuse suffered by the family, the most devastating thing a prisoner endures.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».