A Cuban woman identified on TikTok as @ana.menendez89 went viral with a humorous video in which she uses her dog Lucas as a metaphor for Cuban emigrants who were ignored or mistreated by their acquaintances on the island, but who are now being asked for money from Cuba.
In the clip, just over a minute long, the woman ironically narrates how "Lucas is in love with a dog he left in Cuba" and that this "dog" wrote to him asking for 100 dollars.
The joke serves as a transparent allegory: the "bitch" asking for money from Cuba represents those relatives or acquaintances who treated the emigrant poorly while they lived on the island, but now that they are abroad and have access to dollars, suddenly show a keen interest and make financial requests.
"Look at her thug face. The dog, when he lived in Cuba, treated him terribly, but now she’s very much in love," the author says with irony in the video.
The Cuban adds that she will show Lucas a video so he can see "how that bitch treated him really terribly," and concludes by describing the dog's naivety with a phrase that drew laughter among the followers: "he's a bit slow, you know, and now he believes all her stories".
"Now she is the most in love with him," she concludes with laughter, before finishing with, "my situation with this dog is not easy, it's not easy."
The video accumulated over 889,000 views, 93,400 likes, 5,517 comments, and 19,800 shares, becoming one of the most viral Cuban humorous contents of the beginning of the year.
The humor of Ana Menendez resonates with a well-established trend in the Cuban diaspora on social media: the satire on requests for remittances from Cuba and the double standards of those who mistreated emigrants and now seek them out out of economic necessity.
This humorous phenomenon reflects a real tension that has been exacerbated by the economic crisis in Cuba, where the dependence on remittances as a source of survival has continued to grow, while those who send them from abroad often carry a burden that is not always acknowledged.
This week, the Cuban regime announced that remittances from any country can be collected in cash in dollars at CADECA offices, a measure aimed at attracting foreign currency amid the collapse of formal sending channels.
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