A Cuban who emigrated to Italy at the age of 23 shared a heartbreaking testimony about what no one told her before leaving last Saturday: in Cuba, she was a department head, and in Italy, she ended up working as a butcher for a decade.
The young woman, known on TikTok as "La Yai" (@vivraalta), posted a video just over a minute long in which she describes the gap between the expectations with which she arrived in Europe and the reality she encountered.
I reached 23 thinking that life was going to get better, that everything was going to be easier, but it wasn't the case," she recounted. "In Cuba, I was a department head; I had studied for that, I had a path, and here I ended up being a butcher. Ten years working in something I never imagined for myself."
Her central reflection points directly to what, according to her, no university degree teaches: "Emigrating is not just about changing countries. It’s about swallowing your pride, starting from scratch, and often feeling like you got lost along the way."
The video, especially directed at immigrant women, has a tone of encouragement despite the pain it conveys. "To all the women who came with a dream: do not give up now. Even if you are not where you want to be, keep going. Everything you are experiencing today is preparing you for something greater," said La Yai.
The testimony of this Cuban woman reflects a widely documented phenomenon among professionals from the Island who emigrate to Europe: the inability to practice their professions due to the lack of degree recognition, language barriers, and a rigid job market that forces them to accept jobs far below their qualifications.
Italy is the fifth largest destination for Cuban emigrants, with over 41,000 registered by 2018, according to data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics. Women make up 69.3% of this community, many of whom arrived through marriage to Italian citizens. The regions of Lombardy, Lazio, and Emilia-Romagna account for the majority of this diaspora.
Similar cases to La Yai's have multiplied on social media. Another Cuban in Italy, known as "La Glamurosa", lived for nine years without documents before regularizing her status. "After nine long years, I got my papers and started to dream," she shared in September 2025. "Today marks 15 years that I have lived in this country... I have my own."
In Spain, the Cuban computer engineer Yasy Vidal emigrated to Málaga and worked as a waitress, publicly defending her decision with a phrase that resonated among the diaspora: "Being a waitress does not erase my degree, my story, or my goals; it adds layers of strength and humility."
Since 2023, and with greater intensity in recent months, TikTok has become a space where Cuban émigrés share honest testimonies about loneliness, years without documentation, jobs below their qualifications, and the clash between the dream of emigrating and everyday reality in Europe.
La Yai closed her video with a phrase that her followers took as a motto: "The best is yet to come".
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