An elderly woman known as Luci is dying in extreme neglect in the Los Ángeles neighborhood, San Miguel del Padrón, Havana, while the institutions of the Cuban state are aware of her situation and have not taken any effective measures to help her, according to a video posted on Facebook by her neighbor Alfonso Vera.
In the recording, lasting just over two minutes, the elderly woman can be seen complaining of intense pain, with her feet in poor condition and surrounded by unsanitary conditions, including an infestation of bedbugs in her home located at Calle C number 17,115, interior, in the area known as Virgen del Camino.
"This is not a setup. Or anything resembling it. Everyone knows it. And they do nothing for her," Vera says in the video while showing the condition of her neighbor.
The situation is desperate. "Discreetly. He is going to die. He is going to die here," warns the neighbor in the recording.
Luci herself speaks in the video and describes her abandonment with a phrase that encapsulates the system's indifference: "I am calm, the problem is that I have the pain, that I have sources. They don't take me, those people from the police don’t come to get me."
When Vera asks her if anyone can help her, the elderly woman replies with three words: "No one, dear, no one."
According to the video's description, the health authorities of the «Wilfredo Pérez» clinic, to which Luci belongs, have been aware of the case for some time. The elderly woman herself confirms that she received visits: "I saw the doctor who was here writing the other day, I don’t know. The one from Social Welfare came too, another one came." None of those visits resulted in a solution.
Vera describes the chain of inaction with frustration: "Some say one thing and others say another; the delegate has done her part, the social workers have too, the people at the shelter as well, but the fact is that Mrs. Luci is dying due to the bedbugs and neglect from the public agencies involved."
The neighbor, desperate, published his phone number —55351897— in the video description so that someone could help.
Luci's case is not an isolated incident. Cuba is the oldest country in Latin America, with 25.7% of its population over the age of 60 by the end of 2024, and the system for caring for the elderly is in collapse.
The mass emigration of young people —more than 1.4 million Cubans between 2019 and 2025— has left 17.4% of the elderly without close relatives to care for them.
Minimum pensions do not exceed 4,000 Cuban pesos per month, which is less than ten dollars at the informal exchange rate, and 99% of retirees state that this amount is insufficient for food, housing, or medicine.
Similar cases have been documented in previous years: an elderly man living at a bus stop in Mayabeque and an elderly man with an untreated hip fracture in a nursing home in Perico reflect a pattern that the regime itself has acknowledged without resolving.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Security itself admitted in March 2026 that "there are no resources to care for vulnerable individuals", a confession that has lethal consequences for thousands of elderly Cubans like Luci.
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