A young Cuban woman took to social media to highlight the case of an elderly man who knocked on her door this Monday to ask for something to eat. He explained that he hadn't eaten anything two days ago.
"This man you see here claims to be 75 years old and his name is Jorge Santana Álvarez. Today he knocked on the door of my house fainted, claiming that two days ago he had not eaten any food and that due to his prostate cancer he could not be without eat, because of the treatment it undergoes," explained Internet user Lieska Bandera on Facebook.
The source added that the old man explained that he had been "expelled by his own son from his house" and that he had gone to different instances without receiving help.
"He requests help from the competent authorities because he cannot continue spending the night on the streets and without food. "He ate, next to my door, the food that we shared with him under many tears," concluded Lieska Bandera, who asked for a pious look at the case, of which she said she is not the only one.
In the shared images, the old man could be seen eating the plate of food that the young woman served him at the door of Bandera's home on a staircase, after the young woman helped him with a plate of food.
The source did not specify in which province the incident occurred. At the closing of this note there are no other details about dramatic circumstances that have, in fact, multiplied throughout the country in the last year.
There are hundreds like this Cuban on the island, who take to the streets to try to find what to eat, since they have absolutely nothing at home, while the local authorities offer them no response.
Elderly people marked by the crisis
The elderly are, without a doubt, one of the groups most affected by the crisis of recent years. Every day it is more common to find older people in Cuba who survive by begging for alms,looking for food scraps in the trash and even sleeping on the street.
Begging has increased significantly on the island in a context marked by inflation, shortages of basic products and low salaries and pensions.
In recent months, people with a mental or physical disability and elderly people without family or home have been wandering alone or sometimes accompanied by a pet. They can be seen lying on old cardboard in streets, parks, doorways and bus stops throughout the country.
At the same time, on social networks more and more Cubans have noted the seriousness of the phenomenon of begging, especially among the elderly, a reality that for decades the regime assured could not be found on the streets of the country.
An elderly Cuban of 89 years admitted that the food shortage is affecting him greatly and took the opportunity to compare the last decades on the island with the time he lived before 1959, where he assures that he could live off his work perfectly.
“Hunger is killing me”, an 89-year-old man admitted in September in shocking statements to the independent mediaCubanet.
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