A Cuban mother identified as Griselda Tarrago Escobar abandoned the home that was donated to her within less than 24 hours, allegedly to attempt to sell it, according to the public statement made by content creator Héctor Lorenzo on his social media.
The story began in mid-April, when the humanitarian project "My City has a Little Prince" received a distress call regarding the situation of Griselda and little Natacha Montenegro Tarrago, a six-year-old who suffers from bronchial asthma and hematological disorders and had been without medication for about seven months.
The original housing of both women had a broken roof, unstable electricity, and they cooked with a wood stove. The solidarity campaign, launched by Lorenzo through his page "Soy Holguín" alongside the project El Principito, raised a total of 234,000 Cuban pesos which was used to acquire a new house in El Llano, San Andrés.
In the delivery video, Griselda appeared emotional: "I'm already in my little house, and I'm very happy, thanks to you all," she said before the camera. She also thanked Lorenzo and all the donors "from the bottom of her heart."
However, within a few hours, everything changed. The woman claimed that she wanted to return to her community, that there was nothing to cook with there, and that "after all, the little house is already mine", she can be heard saying in the video.
According to Lorenzo, Griselda did not take the donated food to the new house, she didn't bring the sheets, and started complaining that they had neither food nor water, despite the fact that the house had pots, a refrigerator, electricity in the morning, and a water well nearby with a tank that cost the activists 23,000 pesos.
A collaborator of Lorenzo had handed over 20,000 Cuban pesos at the time of the delivery, an event that was recorded on video. Griselda dismissed that amount disdainfully, as Lorenzo recounted in his post.
The beneficiary also insulted Lorenzo's wife and Yoana from the El Principito project with words that the content creator described as "very ugly" and preferred not to repeat. More than five neighbors from the area testified about what happened and reportedly felt "perplexed and very angry," according to Lorenzo.
She planned everything from the very beginning. She didn't intend to stay in the house, Lorenzo wrote in his public complaint.
In light of the situation, Lorenzo, the project El Principito, and the main collaborator decided to close the house and look for another family that needs it.
It is unacceptable that they will sell or do God knows what with a house that was purchased for a sick girl, she stated.
The case is part of a growing trend in Holguín where citizen groups fill the void left by the State in response to the housing crisis, which in 2026 shows a deficit exceeding 900,000 homes in Cuba.
The government completed only 22% of its construction plan in 2025—2,382 out of 10,795 planned homes—due to shortages of cement, steel, and wood.
In the same weeks, other similar initiatives achieved positive results: an influencer gifted houses to homeless elderly people in Holguín and Cubans raised over 1,137,000 pesos for a pair of siblings with serious illnesses.
"We feel used, deceived, and above all, very sad. But this case has taken away my desire to do something like this again," concluded Lorenzo, whose post garnered over 166,000 views and more than 4,000 comments.
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