Related videos:
A mother residing in Santiago de Cuba wrote a letter this Thursday to the leader Miguel Díaz-Canel asking how to explain to a seven-year-old child and a senior over 80 that there is no breakfast, lunch, or dinner, while the regime insists that the people must "resist."
The text was published by 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 in which she sent the text.
The woman is described as a mother, grandmother, diabetic, and with stress-related skin lesions.
In the letter, formally addressed to the leader, the woman deconstructs the official discourse of "creative resistance" with specific questions, a term that Díaz-Canel used on February 5, 2026 when he stated 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 shortages, resist so many needs, resist the lack of medication, resist looking like zombies, resist the violence that has resulted in the streets from so many shortages, so many suicides, so many deaths due to lack of basic and necessary resources?" the woman writes.
The letter also describes the material degradation of everyday life in the city: "Should I continue cooking with coal or firewood like a native, if I manage to find something to cook? Do you call that resistance or survival?"
Santiago de Cuba is one of the provinces most affected by the energy crisis.
The local Electric Company admitted to 24-hour blackouts 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 at 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 go without at least one meal a day.
In Santiago, specifically, there are reports of people fainting from hunger, individuals picking up food from the ground, and an increase in elderly and sick people living 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 arrested 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 an exhaustion that leaves no room for interpretation: "From down here, I do not see clearly what I should resist. Perhaps you, who heads the food chain from your high position, find meaning in so much resistance. With the utmost respect, those of us who are about to die salute you, without resisting."
Filed under: