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Cuban actor Roberto Salomón revealed in an interview that before dedicating himself to acting, he worked as a lion caretaker at a zoo in Cuba, where the animals were fed only stripped bones and safety conditions were non-existent.
The testimony was collected by journalist Sandy Castrillo for her program "Stories of My People", published on social media in April 2026.
"Well, in my time, they used to give them peeled bones," Salomón said when asked about the diet of lions, in response to whether the animals ate pumpkin.
The actor also described a scene that he called "a crime": upon entering a warehouse at the venue, he found a large number of budgerigars without food, with water on the floor reaching their ankles.
"That type of animals was later thrown to the lions, the chickens, all those things," Salomón explained, detailing how those animals ended up as food for the felines.
The lack of security for workers was equally alarming.
"There was a cage, a tiger, and I had to go in with a hose in one hand and a stick to clean. And then a boy held the door for me in case the tiger came at me," the actor recounted.
Salomón recounted that a coworker died when a leopard escaped due to a mistake in handling a hallway door, and that he himself started working in place of that young man without knowing what had happened.
"I found out about that later," he admitted. "I left there because I was really terrified," he confessed about his decision to leave that job.
Salomón's testimony, although pertaining to a time before his acting career, aligns with the current complaints regarding the state of Cuban zoos.
In early April 2026, the Zoo of Casino Campestre in Camagüey, the largest in the country with over 900 specimens of 72 species, was denounced for the extreme neglect of its lions, with visible ribs and bones.
The director of the zoo denied the abandonment but acknowledged the impact of the economic crisis on the animals' food.
Similar situations have been documented in the zoos of Santiago de Cuba, where felines were fed with leftovers in rusty and dirty cages in January 2026, and in Manzanillo, where lions showed severe malnutrition in May 2024.
The 26 Zoo in Havana has also been the subject of complaints for lions with blistered skin and cages without water, while at the Florida Zoo in Camagüey, a lion went eight days without food in December 2025.
Cuba does not have an animal protection law that safeguards animals in captivity, which leaves zoos without a legal framework for enforcement and perpetuates decades of institutional neglect.
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