Newly surfaced videos and audio, said to be recorded inside Canaleta, a high-security prison in Ciego de Ávila, show a rare and explosive scene: inmates staging what sounds like a mass protest, hammering on metal, shouting “Libertad” and “Patria y Vida,” and railing against hunger and the island’s leaders. People who shared the clips say they were made with contraband phones and then smuggled out of the facility, while relatives and activists describe a heavy security cordon around the prison. For outside observers who are routinely barred from Cuba’s jails, the material is one of the clearest peeks yet at unrest behind prison walls.
Exile activist José Daniel Ferrer posted the videos on social media and said they came from sources inside Canaleta, in some cases after prisoners allegedly paid guards to sneak in phones, according to the Miami Herald. The paper reported that the clips appear to date to Wednesday night and early Thursday morning and noted it could not independently verify them. Relatives and activists told reporters they saw an intense security deployment around the facility as word of the disturbance spread.
What the footage shows
The low-resolution clips and audio recordings capture a roar of voices from inside Canaleta’s cellblocks, with inmates shouting “Freedom,” “Down with the dictatorship,” and at times naming former leaders, while pounding on doors and demanding food and medical care. In some recordings, prisoners say guards used pepper spray and rubber bullets inside cells to push back the unrest. At least one clip includes an inmate alleging that a fellow prisoner was found hanged after a beating, a claim that has not been independently confirmed. Diario de Cuba reported on those chants and complaints from inside Canaleta.
NGOs raise alarm over repression
Mexico-based Centro de Documentación de Prisiones Cubanas (CDPC) and Spain-based Prisoners Defenders told the news agency EFE that riot squads were sent into the prison and that authorities resorted to rubber bullets, pepper spray and physical force to try to crush the protest. Swissinfo relayed EFE’s account of those NGO reports.
Prisoners Defenders also circulated preliminary figures suggesting that several inmates may have been killed in the crackdown. That alleged death toll remains unverified, according to El Confidencial.
Context: chronic problems inside Cuban jails
The turmoil at Canaleta comes against a backdrop of long-running complaints about overcrowding, poor medical care and food shortages in Cuban prisons, documented for years by human-rights groups and prisoners’ families. The CDPC maintains a public database and regular reports tracking deaths and alleged rights violations across the 2023 to 2025 period, which it publishes on its website, the Centro de Documentación de Prisiones Cubanas.
Infobae summarized recent CDPC findings, which describe dozens of deaths and hundreds of alleged human-rights violations in Cuban prisons in recent years.
Official silence and family reports
So far, Cuban officials have not released an official version of what happened at Canaleta. Family members say they were blocked from getting close to the prison entrance and instead were held along a bypass road, where they reported seeing ambulances move in and out amid a heavy police presence. 14ymedio relayed accounts from relatives who feared there had been casualties inside.
If the videos and allegations are authenticated, the Canaleta episode would reinforce long-standing accusations about conditions in Cuba’s penitentiary system and could fuel renewed calls for transparent investigations. For now, families, exile organizations and human-rights monitors remain the primary sources piecing together what happened behind the prison’s walls.
