A Cuban living abroad shared her distress over her deteriorating relationship with her elderly father in Cuba, who—according to her—is being manipulated by his caregiver and speaks ill of his daughter to others, despite the fact that the family ensures he lacks nothing.
The TikToker Leticia Castro (@letycastro674) posted a nearly four-minute video last Sunday to share the situation of a friend of hers, also an emigrant, whose father remains on the island in the care of someone outside the family.
According to the testimony, the friend and her siblings —all of whom are outside of Cuba— cover the costs of food, medications, and the caregiver's payment, and send remedies even before the father needs them.
"Honestly, my dad has what he needs. When he needs medicine, it's provided right away, and even when he doesn't need it, it's sent to him so he has it on hand," said Leticia Castro, quoting her friend.
However, the father believes that the support is not enough and, according to the friend, he is being influenced by the caregiver who looks after him at home.
"My dad now seems to have been manipulated for a long time. My siblings and I realized that he is being manipulated, but he allows himself to be manipulated because he is aware of what he is doing," said the TikToker, echoing her friend's words.
The result is that the father speaks poorly of his daughter to outsiders: "He is talking or telling others about me, about things that he might not like about me or that don’t turn out the way he wants, speaking to people who are not interested in my life, or what I do or don’t do."
What makes the situation even worse is that the father had the opportunity to emigrate but voluntarily rejected it. "My dad is not in this country today because he didn't want to. He chose not to come when he could because he had his visa, and he decided not to come," stated Leticia Castro.
Given this situation, the TikToker reflected on a phenomenon that thousands of Cubans in the diaspora acknowledge: the difficulty for family members on the island to understand that living abroad also involves high expenses.
"Sometimes people in Cuba don’t realize, regardless of what family member they are. They don’t understand that someone outside the country also has a life, a life that also comes at a cost,” she stated.
The situation described by Leticia Castro reflects an increasingly common reality among the Cuban diaspora. In the absence of children who have left, individuals outside the family take on the care of elderly relatives and may influence their perceptions and demands towards family members abroad.
This phenomenon is framed within the severe economic crisis that Cuba is experiencing, where access to food and medicine is precarious, and remittances from abroad have become the main support for thousands of families. The massive emigration of recent years —almost 425,000 Cubans reached the United States in the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years— has left many elderly individuals on the island relying almost exclusively on the money sent by their children from afar.
The Cuban regime also complicates this flow: in March 2026, it began more than 300 criminal investigations against informal currency remittance networks, seizing over 183,000 dollars and 15,000 euros, which further diminishes the real value of the money that reaches families and exacerbates the sense of inadequacy among those who receive it.
"With people in Cuba, it never ends, regardless of whether it’s your mom, your dad, your uncle, your grandparent, or your cousin. With people in Cuba, it never ends because Cuba has many needs," concluded Leticia Castro.
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