A Cuban woman identified on TikTok as @ely_china recounted in a video that she experienced what she describes as witchcraft during a trip to Cuba, claiming that I almost died and even missed my flight.
In her testimony, the 30-year-old young woman recounts that she began to feel severely unwell: whenever she tried to eat something, her body rejected it involuntarily.
"I would drink soda and juice, but as soon as I put something in my mouth, I had to let it go, no matter what," he recounted.
Due to the severity of his symptoms, he went to the hospital several times, where they administered gravinol infusions, an antiemetic medication commonly used in Cuban health centers.
Some asked her if perhaps the serum was water instead of the real medication, but she dismissed it: "It was gravinol because it was solved," she explained, referring to the fact that they had obtained it through informal channels, a common practice in Cuba given the chronic shortage of medications.
He also rejected the idea that his symptoms were just a simple hangover: "I'm 30 years old, and in those 30 years, I've had 300 hangovers perfectly."
Without any medical improvement and having already missed her return flight, the Cuban woman decided to turn to a practitioner of Afro-Cuban religions whom she identifies as a "palero".
"There they started to do a job for me, confirming that I was indeed under witchcraft," he stated.
The narrator acknowledges that she is unsure whether the practitioner was a palero or another type of santero, and she asked her followers to clarify the difference in the comments.
Palo Monte is an Afro-Cuban religion of Bantu origin that works with spirits of the dead through a nganga, or sacred cauldron, while Santería worships orishas syncretized with Catholic saints.
Both traditions are deeply rooted in Cuban culture and are practiced both on the island and in the diaspora, where in recent years they have gained enormous visibility through TikTok.
In September 2025, another Cuban resident in Cape Coral also went viral for discovering what she identified as a witchcraft altar at her front door, an incident that sparked a similar debate among believers and skeptics.
The concept of "witchcraft" in the context of popular Cuban culture refers to negative spiritual work done by a third party to cause harm, a belief that is widespread both in Cuba and among Cubans abroad, and continues to generate millions of interactions on social media.
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