The Cemetery of Cristobal Colón, la Habana

The largest cemetery  in Cuba is El Cementerio de Cristobal Colón.
Zapata & 12th Street, Vedado, la Habana, Cuba.

Construction began in 1871 and since that time, over a million people have been buried there.

For those who are unfamiliar with Cuban (and European) burial customs, let me just say that they are different.  In the USA, people are buried in a cemetery and (for the most part), their bodies remain there undisturbed.  Europe has much less arable land, so church yard space is designated for short-term burials.  The bodies are laid in the ground or in a tomb, and then, about three years later, the bones are exhumed and placed into an ossuary (a container or in some cases, a dry well). The ground or tomb is then reused for the next burial.  In The Colón Cemetery, even if there is a family tomb, the family must pay a rental fee every year.  If the rental fee is not paid, the bones are exhumed and are placed in a general storage area.

The following information was contributed by Emily Arcia on 18 February 2020:

Necrópolis Colon. Quiero aclarar una información errada. Las personas enterradas en un panteón NO las sacan de ahí. Por los osarios estatales hay que pagar una cantidad anual y los restos en esos osarios si los ponen en una fosa común si la “renta” anual no se ha pagado. Son dos cosas diferentes.

(Necropolis Colon. I want to clarify wrong information. People buried in a pantheon ARE NOT taken out of there. For the state ossuaries you have to pay an annual amount and the remains in those ossuaries if they are placed in a common grave if the annual “rent” has not been paid. They are two different things.)

Finding information at The Colón:
Before you can obtain information from the cemetery office, you *must* have the exact date of death.  The cemetery records are not sorted alphabetically but rather according to the date the person died.  The old books are up on high shelves which are reached by climbing a rope ladder, or so I've been told.  So you can't go to the office and ask, "Please give me the information on my grandfather, José Garcia, who is buried here."

The first place to look for the exact date of death is at  home.

Family Cemetery Books:

When  my grandfather died, my grandmother purchased a tomb. At that time, she was issued a book with blank pages.  Every time someone was interred in the tomb, the cemetery placed a stamp in the book and she was able to add the information about that person.  Above is a sample page from her Colón Cemetery book.  This book is treasured because it constitutes proof that the family owns the tomb, and it is passed down from one generation to the next. I've been told that a tomb today costs about $15,000, so this is a valuable asset.  If you can locate your family's Cemetery Book, you will be able to find the exact death date (or at least the burial date.)  With that, you can either go to the cemetery or hire a researcher to go, and you can obtain a copy of the burial record which usually contains the age of the deceased and the names of his parents.

José Villamil y López was my grandmother's second husband.  Above is the record from the cemetery.  You can see that it gives the name of the parish in which he lived as well as the *very important* name of the municipality of L'Oeste.  It is in the municipal registry office at L'Oeste where I will be able to obtain his actual death certificate. (The researcher I am using in Vedado is getting it for me right now.)  Hopefully, that death certificate will contain the name of the town in Spain where he was born.


El Diario de la Marina:
El Diario de la Marina was a newspaper published in la Habana for 128 years.  Publication ended in 1960 when government officials entered the building and destroyed the printing presses.  But during it's lifetime, El Diario published many death notices - over 30,000.

The newspaper has been (mostly) digitized and is available at the Digital Library of the Caribbean, housed at the University of Florida's George A. Smathers Libraries. (see below for the link).

You can either search El Diario, looking for your ancestor, or you can contact Lydia E. Reyes, a member of the Cuban Genealogy/ Genealogía Cubana Facebook group, and for a very small sum you can purchase a PDF of the more than 1200 pages of death notices she has extracted from El Diario - all 30,000. They are arranged alphabetically by first surname, then by second surname and then by first name.  You can click on the image below to enlarge it.

See below for a link to her Lydia E. Reyes's Facebook page:

As mentioned in an earlier post, very few vital records or cemetery in Cuba have been digitized.  The Colón Cemetery is no exception although several people are working hard to change that.  As of this writing (July 2019), more than 2500 names have been added to findagrave.com for the Colón Cemetery.  But that leaves hundreds of thousands more.

Brian Tosko-Bello, of Cuban extraction, has created a not-for-profit organization called Cuba Digitization Project.  (They have a Facebook Page.) With donations from individuals and groups, he has been hiring photographers to take pictures of headstones and memorials in Cuban cemeteries before time and weather obliterate them.  See the link below:

These images will be indexed and uploaded to findagrave.com.

Do you have death dates for your Cuban family members who were buried in this cemetery?  If so, please consider adding them to findagrave so that others can benefit from information which only you might possess.  You can also add biographical information and photos.

The link to findagrave is below, is a sample memorial which I created for my grandfather, Cándido Arango y Garcia.


1 - Link to Digital Library of the Caribbean.

https://www.facebook.com/lydia.e.reyes.7?fref=search&__tn__=%2Cd%2CP-R&eid=ARCC_O5ZCnHrcYqTLyiavsmxWpl0JzLHWmpmaiYBI-dDBucBTMXI75RnyFHvXxFnOTxU83KqH0QQkOxh



2 - Link to Lydia E. Reyes's Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/lydia.e.reyes.7?fref=search&__tn__=%2Cd%2CP-R&eid=ARCC_O5ZCnHrcYqTLyiavsmxWpl0JzLHWmpmaiYBI-dDBucBTMXI75RnyFHvXxFnOTxU83KqH0QQkOxh



3 - Link to Cuba Digitization Project.
https://www.facebook.com/Cuba-Digitization-Project-173557506657218/



4 - Link to Findagrave.com Colón Cemetery

https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/639615/cementerio-de-crist%C3%B3bal-col%C3%B3n?



5 - Link to create a Memorial at findagrave.com

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/create/form?cemeteryId=639615&cemeteryName=Cementerio%20de%20Crist%C3%B3bal%20Col%C3%B3n



6 - Here's an example of a memorial I created for my grandfather, Candido Arango y Garcia.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/189811858/c_ndido-arango_y_garcia