A mother residing in Santiago de Cuba wrote a letter this Thursday to the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel to ask how to explain to a seven-year-old child and an elderly person over 80 that there is no breakfast, lunch, or dinner, while the regime insists that the people must "resist."
The text was published by the social communicator Yosmany Mayeta Labrada on his Facebook page after receiving the document anonymously.
The author requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals. "You know that everything here is problematic, and the consequences for those who raise their voice are dire," she explained to Mayeta in the private message where she sent the text.
The woman is described as a mother, grandmother, diabetic, and having stress-related skin lesions.
In the letter, formally addressed to the ruler, the woman dismantles the official discourse of "creative resistance" with specific questions, a term that Díaz-Canel used on February 5, 2026 in front of the press by stating that Cubans would overcome difficult times "with creative resistance, with the effort and talent of the majority."
"What are we supposed to resist? Resist what? What is this resistance about? Resist the power outages, resist so many needs, resist the lack of medications, resist looking like zombies, resist the violence that has caused so many shortages on the streets, so many suicides, so many deaths due to the lack of basic and necessary resources?" the woman writes.
The letter also describes the material degradation of daily life in the city: “Is it to continue cooking with coal or firewood like an indigenous person, if I manage to find something to cook? Is that what you call resistance or survival?”
Santiago de Cuba is one of the provinces most affected by the energy crisis.
The local Electric Company acknowledged 24-hour-long power outages since March, and by the end of April the electricity generation deficit exceeded 1,502 MW nationwide.
The food crisis is equally severe. A recent report on five provinces on the brink revealed that 78% of respondents believe the current situation is worse than the Special Period of the 1990s.
The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights indicates that 89% of the population lives in extreme poverty and that seven out of ten Cubans forgo at least one meal a day.
In Santiago, there are reports of people fainting from hunger, individuals picking up food from the ground, and an increase in the number of elderly and sick people on the streets.
Cuban youths have gone out to distribute food to those who have nothing to eat.
It is not the first time that a Cuban mother has made a public complaint of this nature. In March 2025, a mother was violently detained in Río Cauto while protesting alone against food shortages and blackouts.
The author of the letter concludes her text with a phrase of historical resonance and a weariness that leaves no room for interpretation: "From down here, I cannot clearly see what I should be resisting; perhaps you, who heads the food chain, from your position above, can see the meaning of such resistance. With utmost respect, those of us who are about to die salute you, without resisting."
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