A video published on TikTok by the account @reencuentrosfamiliares shows the heart-wrenching reunion of a person with their daughter and mother in Venezuela after five years of separation, and it has moved millions of users on social media, including many Cubans who recognize their own pain in that story.
The description of the clip says it all: He hadn't seen his parents and daughter for 5 years. The images capture the exact moment when one of the protagonists, overwhelmed with emotion, ends up on the ground during the hug.
The video is accompanied by a song whose lyrics seem to be written for any Latin American migrant: "I have marked on my chest all the days that time did not allow me to be here".
The reunion was published by an account dedicated specifically to documenting these moments among migrant families, reflecting the high demand for this type of content among Latin American diasporas.
Venezuela has accumulated more than 7.8 million emigrants since 2014, according to data from the UN Refugee Agency, marking one of the largest migration crises in the world. Many of these families have remained separated for years, with children who emigrated while parents or grandparents stayed in the country, or vice versa.
But the impact of the video among the Cuban audience is not coincidental. Cuba is going through its own unprecedented migration crisis, with over 500,000 departures annually reported in recent years, resulting from 67 years of dictatorship that have pushed hundreds of thousands to leave the island and their families behind.
Cubans know that pain all too well: years without seeing a mother, a daughter, loved ones, separated by a sea and a regime that does not allow them to live with dignity in their own country.
That shared pain explains why a reunion that took place in Venezuela can equally shake those who emigrated from Havana, Santiago de Cuba, or any other corner of the island.
Yesterday, another viral video showed the heartbreaking cries of a girl upon reuniting with her mother, in a scene that sparked comments like "Damn distance, how we suffer." In January, a Cuban father who had been away for seven years embraced his children in front of the cameras and summed up what thousands feel: It’s for those hugs that we have to return.
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