A Cuban mother identified on Facebook as Gely la flaki became the center of a wave of reactions across Latin America after posting a video where she prepares homemade croquettes for her two young daughters using only the leftover bones from a cooked chicken from the previous day, three malanguitas, ají cachucha, flour, milk, and Goya seasoning.
The video, titled "How to Survive in Cuba," lasts just over six minutes and starkly depicts the simultaneous hardships faced by this family: without garlic, without onions, without diapers, and with barely the remnants of a previous meal to improvise lunch for their daughters, one aged two and the other five.
"I don’t think it will be necessary to use that much, because it’s more bone than meat," the woman says as she puts the bones to boil to extract the broth that will serve as the base for the croquettes.
"To those who don’t know me, I have two little girls, one who is two and one who is five. You can probably guess. And right now, my youngest, who is two, just peed on the floor since I don’t have any diapers," she explains while continuing to cook.
The scene encapsulates numerous deprivations in just a few minutes: food, basic hygiene, and essential supplies for child care, a reality that other Cuban mothers have also documented on social media due to the inability to afford a pack of diapers that can cost three times the average monthly salary.
At the end of the video, her eldest daughter, Angie, appears enthusiastically eating the croquettes. "Angie is crazy about eating them because Angie ate them raw," the mother says with a mix of pride and relief.
The comments reflect the emotional impact the video had on users from Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Spain, and dozens of other countries.
A Cuban resident abroad summed it up like this: "This is how we live in Cuba, and it’s really more difficult than you show, thank God you had water and electricity."
Another user noted: "When there wasn't the extreme need in Cuba that there is now, those croquettes made of pure flour with a hint of flavor were already being made. I satisfied my hunger with that many times. This is the average Cuban. The majority. And they are fortunate because not everyone has that flour to make something to eat. This is the reality of Cuba."
The video of Gely la flaki is part of a growing trend among Cubans who document their daily survival on social media, from mothers cooking at three in the morning to take advantage of the moments when electricity returns, to families that prepare tamales with green plantains due to the lack of corn.
The food crisis that Cuba is experiencing in 2026 is seen by 80% of the population as more severe than the Special Period of the 1990s, according to the Food Monitor Program.
The same organization reported that five provinces are facing critical levels of food insecurity and that 96.91% of Cubans lack adequate access to food, while 25% go to bed without dinner and 29% of families have eliminated one daily meal.
Deaths due to malnutrition increased by 74.42% between 2022 and 2023, rising from 43 to 75 fatalities, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information, in a country that imports between 70% and 80% of its food after decades of decline in agricultural production under the dictatorship.
"This is cooking with what you have on hand, incredible what a mother can do," wrote a user in the comments, summarizing what millions of people thought upon watching the video.
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