A teenager dressed as Batman danced through the door as music thumped inside for a Halloween party in the ground-floor apartment of a Soviet-era housing project in Cuba's capital. On a side table, candles flickered inside squashes carved into jack-o'-lanterns.

Marilyn Alvarez smeared red makeup onto 17-year-old Luis Ramos' eyes, putting the finishing touches on the high school student's devil costume.

Teens dressed as skeletons, witches and an executioner danced under disco lights, ate cake and sipped creamy rum drinks. Alvarez's daughter Alannis Rodriguez, a 12th grader dressed as a she-devil, posed for a photo with her dog, a pug she had dressed as a baby.