Burial Records — Holguín Municipal Cemetery
A resident of Holguín scanned ten books of burial and exhumation records kept by the Holguín Municipal Cemetery, covering the years 1925 to 1979. These records were previously available only on paper and are now digitized in HD. All ten books are transcribed: 36,361 burials you can search here. Every record links to its page in the scanned book; open a record and choose View source to see the line as it was written (scans open with a free account). Each line was read from the scans by OCR and by independent readers, and the lines they could not settle were read by a vision model and checked against the owner's own readings. A reading that is still uncertain keeps its marks: (?) after a doubtful word and [...] for a part that cannot be made out. Fetus burials are included, with the mother where the book names her, and so are the burials of amputated limbs (Miembro), which are labelled as such. Where a burial license from the Holguín Municipal Court survives for the same burial, the two records link to each other. The page headings, monthly reports and totals written into the books are not burials and are not listed.
The Holguín Municipal Cemetery is in the city of Holguín, Holguín Province, in eastern Cuba. It was inaugurated in 1814 and stands at the corner of Martí and Rastro streets, near the Carretera Central highway.
| Book |
Years covered |
Pages |
Burials |
| Book 1 |
1925 to 1939 |
about 118 |
4,010 |
| Book 2 |
1940 to 1946 |
133 |
3,419 |
| Book 3 |
1943 to 1949 |
165 |
4,162 |
| Book 4 |
1950 to 1955 |
151 |
3,596 |
| Book 5 |
April 1956 to July 1960 |
139 |
3,324 |
| Book 6 |
1961 to 1965 |
173 |
4,271 |
| Book 7 |
1966 to 1968 |
128 |
3,459 |
| Book 8 |
1969 to 1973 |
194 |
5,424 |
| Book 9 |
1974 |
39 |
1,169 |
| Book 10 |
1975 to 1979 |
194 |
3,527 |
The M and P after the age (Books 6 to 9)
From about 1961, the books add a letter M or P in a narrow column after each person's age. The books never say what the letters stand for. Our inference is that M means Municipio, a municipal grave, and P means Propiedad, a privately owned grave. In January 1962 the column holds 60 M and 21 P (Book 6, PDF pages 8 to 10), and that month's summary at the foot of page 10 reads "Municipio 60, Propiedades 21". Later monthly summaries give the same two categories. The letters do not follow the person's age or sex. The books do not record what "Propiedad" meant legally in Holguín.
Book 1 and the Onomástica transcription
Book 1 was first transcribed by the public Telegram group Onomástica (join the Onomástica Telegram channel). In 2026 it was read again from the scans with the other nine books. The new reading replaces the earlier one on this page and adds the fetus burials the first transcription left out; where Onomástica read a name differently, its reading is shown on the record and still finds it in a search.
Burial licenses
The Holguín Municipal Court's burial licenses for 1941 and 1945 to 1950 are on their own page: Burial Licenses — Holguín Municipal Court, 1941 to 1950. A license often says more about a person than these books do: where they were from, their occupation, age and parents, and when and how they died.
Acknowledgements
Our sincere thanks to the resident of Holguín who scanned these books, and to the Onomástica Telegram group, whose transcription of Book 1 came first.
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