A boy between 15 and 16 years old walks through the corridors of a building in Havana at night selling bread for 200 pesos each.
His story, along with that of Jhon, a teenager who dropped out of school to work in construction, is the focus of a chronicle published on Facebook by the Cuban writer Dailin Carracedo Velázquez that depicts, in stark detail, how the economic crisis has stolen childhood from an entire generation.
Carracedo Velázquez describes the baker boy as a young man with delicate features, impeccable clothing, and a voice free of any shadow of a mustache, who every afternoon breaks the silence of the building with his call: "Baker!". When he reaches her door, he says, "They're still warm, my aunt. I just bought them."
To earn 2,000 Cuban pesos, that boy would have to sell 40 loaves of bread and walk many blocks at night, calculates the author of the post on Facebook.
A dozen eggs costs 2,650 pesos or more, a figure that illustrates the vast gap between the efforts of these young people and what their families need to survive.
It is not an isolated case: informal child labor has become normalized in Cuba amid an unrelenting crisis.
The second case mentioned in the report is that of Jhon, captured in a video by a Cuban street influencer.
The teenager shares that he left school to work as a masonry helper "or whatever," in a context where the minimum wage has been frozen at 2,100 pesos since 2021, an amount that does not even cover the basic needs of a family.
The situation of these young people reflects a broader and devastating reality: the 89% of Cuban families are in a state of extreme poverty, which forces children and adolescents to become providers prematurely, leaving the classrooms due to the urgent need to bring money home.
The phenomenon is not new, but its magnitude has grown alarmingly. The official press acknowledged it in April 2025, although without delving into the structural causes that fuel it.
Meanwhile, the government has responded with slogans: President Miguel Díaz-Canel went so far as to state that "Where resources are lacking, imagination", a phrase that many Cubans received with bitterness.
The approval of the new Code of Childhood, Adolescence, and Youth has not changed the reality on the streets, where more and more minors are earning a living selling bread, polvorones, and chicken broth on the streets of Havana and other cities in the country, while the State turns a blind eye.
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