A Cuban mother residing in the United States published yesterday a video on TikTok that captures the moment when she says goodbye to her son at the bus station in Havana, in a scene filled with pain that encapsulates the drama experienced by thousands of families separated by emigration.
The clip, lasting just 17 seconds, was posted by the account @anislachina90, identified as "The Cuban and the Gringo," referring to the couple formed by the Cuban creator and her American husband, with whom she resides outside the island.
In the images, the woman is seen embracing her son, her face bathed in tears, before the young man walks away and says goodbye from a distance at the Havana terminal.
"And this is when I feel like the worst mother in the world because I have to leave him again", the woman expressed in the video, a phrase that resonated immediately with users on the platform and articulates a shared sense of guilt experienced by thousands of Cuban emigrant mothers.
The description accompanying the post was equally eloquent: "Goodbyes will always be the hardest part of the journey."
The video is set against a phenomenon widely documented on social media: the pain of Cuban mothers who emigrate, leaving their children on the island, typically in the care of grandparents or other relatives, with the promise of reunification that often takes years to materialize.
This type of scene has become recurrent on TikTok in recent weeks. Last Tuesday, another viral clip showed a Cuban mother covering her mouth to stifle her tears as she watched her daughter leave Cuba. On April 13, a video showed a Cuban young man crossing barriers at an airport to embrace his mother after a long separation. On April 20, Cuban @yaimagonzalez31 hid in a box to surprise her son in Cuba.
In February, another Cuban resident in the United States, @anaisismaron98, published a video reflecting on her son's situation on the island with a phrase that also went viral: "In Cuba, there is no electricity, but there are hands waiting for him."
Behind every farewell there is a structural crisis that causes it. Cuba recorded over 250,000 official departures just in 2024, with independent estimates doubling that figure, marking one of the largest exoduses in the history of the island after 67 years of communist dictatorship.
Thousands of Cuban women emigrate, leaving their children on the island to send remittances and seek better living conditions, assuming sacrifice as the only way to provide them with a future. The social stigma of abandoning their children weighs heavily on them, which explains the immediate resonance of phrases like the one spoken by this mother at the bus station in Havana.
Clinical studies warn that prolonged separation from parental figures due to emigration leads to symptoms of depression, anxiety, and in extreme cases, tendencies to self-harm, a silent consequence of the exodus that rarely appears in official statistics.
The bus station in Havana and the José Martí airport have become the usual settings for these farewells that move millions, a daily reflection of what the dictatorship has done to the Cuban family.
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