Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción) were agricultural forced labor camps operated by the Cuban government from November 1965 to July 1968 in the Province of Camagüey.
The language used in the title can be misleading, as pointed out by historian Abel Sierra Madero, "The hybrid structure of work camps' military units served to camouflage the true objectives of the recruitment effort and to distance the UMAPs from the legacy of forced labor.
"[2] Many of the inmates were gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, intellectuals, farmers who resisted collectivization, and anyone else who was considered "anti-social" or "counter-revolutionary.
"[1] Former Intelligence Directorate agent Norberto Fuentes estimated that of approximately 35,000 internees, 507 ended up in psychiatric wards, 72 died from torture, and 180 committed suicide.
"[4] The report concludes that the UMAP camps’ two objectives were "facilitating free labor for the state" and "punishing young people who refuse to join communist organizations.
"[8] According to an April 14, 1966 article in Granma, the official state newspaper, UMAP camps were proposed at a November 1965 meeting between Fidel Castro and military leaders.
The UMAP was used as a tool to allow Cuba to mimic the revolutionary changes brought about in the Soviet Union in which many in the government wanted to craft its citizens into an "obedient"[1] labor force.
[11] One of the most common ways to take individuals to UMAP camps was for a false notice to appear for military service, which had become obligatory since the establishment of the draft on November 12, 1963 by Law No.
[17] The labor that the internees performed consisted of a variety of agricultural tasks from tearing down the marabou plant to picking fruit, but they mostly engaged in the cutting of sugar cane.
[23] Former suministros from UMAP camps report that military officials did not provide enough food so that they could take the remaining foodstuffs back home or sell them to people in the countryside (guajiros).
Among the many forms of abuse, former internees report Jehovah’s Witnesses being beaten, threatened with execution, stuffed with dirt in their mouths, buried in the ground until their neck, and tied up naked outside in barbed wire without food or water until they fainted.
[29] On September 8, the Cuban Foreign Ministry asked him to leave "by the first flight" because he had taken photographs of anti-aircraft guns visible from his hotel room window and "exhibited an incorrect attitude toward the revolution" in an article that he had published.
[29] During the trip, Kidd departed Havana and wandered through the rural former Province of Camaguey where he encountered a UMAP labor camp near the hamlet of El Dos de Cespedes.
[30] The barbed-wire enclosed camp was run by 10 security guards and held 120 internees, consisting of Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics, and "those loosely termed 'social misfits' by the government.
[30] Internees at the camp Kidd discovered were housed in two long white concrete buildings with no windows and just a hole in the wall, which had bunk beds with sacks slung between wooden beams for mattresses.
Contemporary authors like Lillian Guerra believe the reason for their creation rested on the need for the communist government to put itself directly into the personal lives of its citizens and then to use gender and sexuality to eliminate "idealogical diversionism.