La Noche de la Muerte was a series of massacres in the Yaran capital of Esperanza that was carried out by the Fuerzas Nacionales de Defensa (FND) amid the Yaran Revolution of 2021. President Anton Castillo's soldiers summarily executed dozens of Yarans who refused to be drafted as corvee labor in Yara's tobacco fields or into the FND.
After Castillo's rise to power in 2019, he restored his father Gabriel Castillo's authoritarian regime, dividing society between patriotic "True Yarans" and socially and politically undesirable "Fake Yarans." He forced "Fake Yarans" to work on the island's tobacco plantations, whose fields were sprayed with the cancer-causing PG-240 fertilizer as part of the transformation of tobacco into the Viviro cancer treatment. In response to Castillo's despotism, left-wing revolutionary groups like the Movimiento Libertad formed and waged armed resistance against Castillo and his military, the FND.
In 2021, Castillo sent soldiers into Esperanza to round up citizens for the draft, whether as FND soldiers or as corvee labor on the plantations. As Libertad agents like Lita Torres had infiltrated the city, the soldiers were ordered to shoot resisters on sight. In the ensuing "Night of Death," government troops forced citizens to either join their ranks or shot them dead, occasionally lining prisoners up against a wall before shooting them. When he received word that his rebellious son Diego Castillo had been smuggled aboard a Miami-bound refugee boat by his nanny, Castillo personally intercepted the boat with the Yaran navy, killed the nanny, retrieved his son, and ordered the refugees in the boat to be shot after they witnessed his son's attempted escape. Torres was mortally wounded and her friend Dani Rojas left as the only survivor. A dying Lita would tell Rojas to link up with Clara Garcia and Libertad on the Zamok Archipelago, initiating Rojas' role in the revolution, which would ultimately bring down Castillo and his dynasty.