The government of Saudi Arabia will fund the construction of a $9.3 million mosque in Havana, Cuba, the independent outlet 14 y Medio reported on Monday.
The outlet, citing unnamed official sources, detailed that the Saudi-funded “King Salman Mosque” will occupy a land adjacent to the Tallapiedra thermoelectric power plant in Old Havana — once one of the most advanced of its kind in Latin America when it was originally built in 1889. The derelict plant was permanently shut down by the communist Castro regime in 2024.
The mosque is reportedly planned to have a capacity of 500 people and will feature prayer halls, a public library, dining hall, green spaces, and community rooms. Per the sources cited by 14 y Medio, the $9.3 million funding is provided by Riyadh through the Saudi Fund for Development and the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana (OHCH) as the listed manager of the funds.
According to the report, the Portuguese building company Engimov’s Caribbean branch Engimov Caribe will carry out the construction of the mosque. The company maintains an active presence in Cuba, offering several construction-related supplies and solutions according to its website.
14 y Medio stated that it was able to independently confirm that the construction sign has been recently marked with a signage listing the name “King Salman Mosque,” a building license permit number from the year 2020, and the names of the companies involved in the project — including Restaura, an OHCH unit that is reportedly tasked with the conservation and restoration of Havana’s historic center. Restaura does not appear to have carried out its intended mission, given the multiple reports denouncing the current ruined state of Havana’s historic city center, a UNESCO-declared World Heritage site. Footage published by 14 y Medio on social media shows that the construction site has also been recently fenced off.
14 y Medio recounted that plans to build a mosque in Havana have circulated in Cuba since as early as 2014 when the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for the construction of a mosque in Havana with a design reminiscent of the Ortaköy Mosque in Istanbul. The Turkey-endorsed plans, however, never materialized and the Cuban regime never explicitly explained why it ultimately backed down from the initiative. In that same year, Erdoğan notoriously made the false claim that it was Muslims who “discovered the Americas” in the 12th century — 300 years before Christopher Columbus actually discovered the continent in 1492.
Per the independent outlet, Saudi-backed projects for a mosque in Havana subsequently started to materialize two years later in 2016, calling for Cuba to host the “largest” mosque in Latin America, with an estimated 10,000-person capacity.
According to Cuba-focused outlets, it is estimated that there are about 6,000 practitioners of Islam in Cuba as of this year — which represents 0.0636 percent of Cuba’s remaining 9.43 million inhabitants amid the ongoing demographic collapse of the nation’s population. The overwhelming majority of Cubans are either practitioners of Christianity or practitioners of Cuba’s syncretic santería religion, also known as Lucumí or Yoruba, or both. These religions have survived despite the Castro regime’s decades-long persecution of both groups in the island-nation.
The Saudi Fund for Development has reportedly provided about $193 million in funding to the Castro regime for at least seven projects in recent years.
14 y Medio detailed that, in 2021, an unnamed source from the Havana Historian’s Office affirmed to the outlet that a $26.6 million Saudi loan received in 2017 for a purported project to rehabilitate and construct social works in Cuba was instead diverted and used for the Fidel Castro Ruz Center in El Vedado, a center dedicated to venerating the late murderous communist dictator. The center opened in November 2021 on the 5th anniversary of Castro’s death.
“The loan was supposed to be for housing, but they took a portion for the Center and for the Capitol as well,” the source reportedly stated to 14 y Medio.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.