Today, people across the world will be giving to their favorite causes on #Giving Tuesday, to help make a difference.

#GivingTuesday began in 2012 as a simple idea, to dedicate one day of the year to live more generously. It sparked a global movement that unites millions of people through the principle of radical generosity, “the idea that the suffering of others should be as intolerable to us as our own suffering.” Cuba needs some radical generosity.

Currently there are 1,182 identified political prisoners and prisoners of conscience jailed in Cuba.

The Center for a Free Cuba (CFC) was founded in 1997 to combat the normalization of the suffering of Cubans in the island by a decades-old dictatorship. We have been supporting the inalienable right of Cubans to their own rights, urging persons of goodwill to amplify the voices of the Cuban people, and mobilizing democracies around the world to institute policies that encourage genuine change in Cuba. 

Thanks to the support of people like you, in 2025, CFC has sent medicines to families of jailed dissidents; provided relief to dissidents on the island impacted by Hurricane Melissa, supplied needed smartphones and laptops; and furnished internet access to keep uncensored information flowing in and out of the island. These are difficult times, and your help is more needed now than ever.

A friend of the Center has pledged a matching gift challenge of up to $15,000. Any donation received by December 31, 2025, will be matched dollar for dollar. That means that your $100 contribution will be worth $200, and a $1,000 contribution will be matched for a contribution of $2000. The more generous your donation, the more your gift will benefit CFC.

Over the past year, the Center has exposed the criminal and terrorist nature of the Cuban dictatorship, and the foolishness of providing resources to this regime.

• CFC’s executive director authored the OpEd “Why a return to Obama-era policy on Cuba would be a big mistake” in The Hill on January 8, 2025, looking back over the past decade to the December 17, 2014 Obama-Castro announcement of a thaw between Havana and Washington, and the negative results of the policy for Cubans on the island, for the United States, and for the region.
• Joseph Connor, whose father was one of the four men murdered by Cuban backed Puerto Rican terrorists on January 24, 1975, invited John Suárez and Frank Calzón to attend the 50th Anniversary Remembrance of the Fraunces Tavern FALN Bombing on January 24, 2025  joining victims’ families, police investigators, and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to demand extradition of FALN bomber William Morales still harbored by the Cuban dictatorship.
• On February 13, 2025 the Center published a CubaBrief on the 1975 Fraunces Tavern Bombing and the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue Shootdown. This reflective analysis linked the 50th Fraunces anniversary and 29th BTTR shootdown, demanding justice for Havana’s terrorism victims.
• CFC staff, and Research Council member Sebastian Arcos Cazabon attended the vigil at the Graham Center Fountain at Florida International University on February 24, 2025 in a continuing demand for justice for the four BTTR pilots downed by Cuban MiGs in 1996, and uploaded footage of the vigil. The vigil was hosted by the families of the four men killed, and Florida International University.
• CFC twice organized protests against Cuba’s role in Russia’s imperial Ukraine invasion, first on February 27, 2025 and a again on October 2, 2025.  On both occasions, activists first gathered in front of the Cuban Embassy protesting the murder of Russian and Cuban dissidents, and denouncing the use of thousands of Cuban mercenaries in Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine. We then marched down the street to the Russian Ambassador’s residence where the protest was continued, and concluded.
• On May 1, 2025, the Center’s executive director participated on the Hudson Institute panel on “Cuba’s Kleptocracy: How It Works and Why It Matters for US Policy“. He was joined in person on the panel by former State Department official  Daniel Batlle, and virtually by Miami Herald reporter Nora Gámez Torres. The panel was moderated by  Nate Sibley, a Hudson Fellow and Director of the Kleptocracy Initiative.
• On May 8, 2025, CFC’s executive director joined the Victims of Communism Foundation panel on Unyielding Resolve with Paula Dobriansky, where he identified Cuba as a “captive nation” with prisoner deaths and Moscow ties to the Ukraine war.
• The Center welcormed  the election of Rosa María Payá as IACHR Commissioner for 2026–2029 on June 27, 2025.  Guillermo Marmol, chairman of the Board of Trustees and CFC’s President, Manuel Iglesias issued statements in support of her election.
• When Cuban students began a prolonged nonviolent protest in Cuba against rising costs to connect online, CFC staff published articles, providing historic context to the Cuban student protests, in Victims of Communism on July 9, 2025 and Diario de las Américas on July 11, 2025
• The Center led in organizing a vigil for the fourth anniversary of the 11J Protests in Cuba on July 11, 2025.The demonstration was co-hosted with Students for Liberty and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation outside the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC.
• On July 21, 2025, CFC posted the panel “A Season of Nonviolence: Reflection on Nonviolent resistance in Cuba and China” at Florida International University, on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Oswaldo Payá by Cuban regime agents on July 22, 2012. The panel included presentations by Chinese human-rights lawyer Teng Biao and Cuban activist Regis Iglesias, centered on Gandhian-Kingian non-violence.
• CFC on September 17th hosted a panel discussion at the Rayburn House Office Building on post 11J repression and exodus since 2021. It provided congressional staff and diplomats first hand survivor stories. On September 18th the documentary Cuba’s Eternal Night premiered in Washington DC at the Miracle Theatre.
• The Center co-authored a report on Cuba’s hemispheric drug trafficking role in September 2025 titled “Cuba: Precursor of the Cartel of the Suns” exposing regime-cartel links that fund repression. 
• Janisset Rivero represented CFC, submitting testimonies and meeting with Gina Romero, the UN special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, in New York City on October 16, 2025. 
• CFC led an effort in which Cuban organizations and leaders addressed a public letter to the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, on November 17th,  hours before he met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky calling on him to be consistent in his support for Kyiv by conditioning European Union aid on halting Havana’s support for Moscow’s illegal war in Ukraine.
• A conference titled Havana’s Threat to U. S. National Security and Hemispheric Stability by the Executive Director of the CFC was live streamed on November 20th.The conference was organized and sponsored by the National Association of Cuban American Educators.