A Cuban woman identified as Yai Savon located and visited the boy who days earlier had asked her for food on the street, in an emotional reunion that was captured in a video where the child expressed his greatest fear: that his mother will be taken to jail.
The case began on April fifth, when Savon posted a video recounting how two children knocked on his door pleading for food.
"Don't you have some old bread, don't you have any bananas? Anything you can give me, we haven't eaten anything," were the words of the children, according to the woman, whose video went viral and generated a wave of solidarity among her followers.
In front of his followers, they asked him to find the children. Savon asked neighbors in the neighborhood until he located the home of the minor, identified as Miguelito, where he was received by his aunt and sister.
Upon arrival, the woman documented the precarious conditions in which the child lives and experienced an emotional reunion.
Miguelito, visibly scared at first, revealed his greatest distress: "He doesn’t want them to take my mom to jail," Savon recounted, trying to reassure him: "Oh, sweetheart, don’t worry, we’re not going to take your mom to jail. Do you hear?"
The child also expressed his desire to improve himself: "I want to go to a special school. To learn something," said Miguelito, to which Savon confirmed that the child cannot read or write.
The woman, moved to tears, promised the child that everything would be alright and made a direct appeal to her followers: "We and you followers, help us in this mission."
A humanitarian crisis of historic proportions
The case of Miguelito reflects a humanitarian crisis of historic proportions in Cuba. According to the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, based on 1,344 interviews conducted in seventy municipalities, 89% of the population lives in extreme poverty and seven out of ten Cubans forgo at least one meal a day.
The Food Monitor Program noted in March 2026 that 80% of Cubans believe the current situation is worse than the Special Period of the 1990s.
Childhood is one of the most affected sectors: UNICEF reported in November 2025 that one in ten Cuban children suffers from severe food insecurity, consuming only two of the eight recommended essential food groups.
The education system is not immune to the crisis. Cuba faces a shortage of thousands of teachers, dilapidated schools, and frequent blackouts that hinder the normal progression of classes, leaving children like Miguelito outside the educational system.
Activists documented in February 2026 mothers with very young children living on the streets in Havana for the first time, without any form of state assistance, while the Cuban Parliament itself acknowledged in 2024 the existence of 100,737 students in vulnerable situations.
The government has systematically denied the magnitude of the problem: the former Minister of Labor Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera stated in July 2025 that there are no beggars in Cuba, referring to them as "vagrants" or "disguised," comments that ultimately cost her the position.
"Once again, this child moved me to tears. It's incredible, it's incredible the things that can be seen," said Savon as he finished the video, in which he also asked without receiving an answer: "Where is the president of this country? Where are those people who are supposed to care about the children?"
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