Cuba’s youth gangs expand as crisis and drug use deepen

Havana emergency-room registrations tied to drugs rose from 467 in 2024 to 886 in 2025, a jump that tracks with the spread of tighter, more organized youth gangs across the capital. The groups are now visible in nearly all Havana neighborhoods and inside prisons, where they impose their own rules through robberies, assaults and drug distribution.

The most visible turning point came on June 8, 2024, at Finca de los Monos in Cerro municipality, during a youth cultural event called Start of Youth Summer 2024. What began as a public gathering escalated into a fight in which youths used machetes and other bladed weapons, leaving at least eight people injured. The case later moved through criminal proceedings, and in June 2025, 18 of the 20 accused were sentenced.

That episode sharpened a debate over how much Havana’s public security had deteriorated. The Organized Crime Index describes the city’s gang scene as unstable, with new youth gangs frequently emerging and dissolving, but the churn has not slowed the violence. Those crews are tied to robbery, homicide, prostitution, extortion and drug trafficking, and their reach now runs from street corners to prison yards.

The economic crisis has widened the pipeline into those groups. Shortages, poverty and record emigration have left more young Cubans exposed to gang money and to cheap synthetic drugs, especially the chemical cannabinoids that have flooded the market. Independent monitors, including the Cuban Observatory for Citizen Auditing, reported a sharp rise in verified crime in Cuba in the first half of 2025, underscoring how the problem has moved beyond one neighborhood or one brawl.

The state has answered mostly with a zero-tolerance line on drugs and a heavier crackdown, not with any public acknowledgment of a deeper gang crisis. Drug trafficking in Cuba can carry sentences up to life imprisonment, but the numbers coming out of Havana show how quickly the violence and the drug trade have fused into the same street-level economy.

Finca de los Monos was not just a one-off fight in Cerro. It was the moment many Havana residents saw the city’s public-order problem step out into the open.