A Cuban resident in Ontario, Canada, identified on TikTok as @umbe_b, posted a 16-second video practicing snowboarding with the Cuban flag on April 12 that has touched thousands: I want a free Cuba.
The brief, wordless clip lets the images speak for themselves: a Cuban gliding down the snowy slopes of Ontario while donning the colors of his homeland and asserting the freedom that the dictatorship denies to those who remain on the island.
The symbolic contrast is striking. Snowboarding is a virtually nonexistent sport in Cuba, impossible due to geographical and economic reasons. Watching it practiced by a Cuban emigrant who simultaneously calls for a free Cuba encapsulates in just a few seconds what it means to live outside the island: enjoying freedoms unimaginable there, while not forgetting those who were left behind.
The response from the Cuban community abroad was immediate and emotional. The video garnered 19,600 views, 2,420 likes, 252 comments, and 101 shares on TikTok, figures that reflect the resonance such messages have among the diaspora.
The video contributes to a sustained trend among Cuban emigrants who use social media to express their national identity and longing for freedom from their host countries, combining elements of their new lives—sports, landscapes, local customs—with patriotic symbols and political messages.
Ontario, with Toronto at its center, hosts an active Cuban community. The province is involved in the Provincial Nominee Program, one of the pathways that Cubans have used to settle in Canada in recent years.
The global Cuban diaspora surpassed one million emigrants between 2021 and 2025, driven by the worst economic crisis on the island in decades and the repression unleashed after the protests on July 11, 2021. Many of these emigrants have found in social networks a space to keep their identity alive and to demand, from afar, what the regime continues to deny them at home.
The message from @umbe_b, written with a dove and a broken chain, needs no further explanation: "I want a free Cuba."
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