A Cuban mother waited four years to hug her son again, and the moment she finally achieved this was captured in a video that went viral on TikTok.
The clip, published last Sunday by the user @yami89548, shows the arrivals area of the Frank País International Airport in Holguín, where the mother waits as her son exits the airport.
The overlay text in the video says it all: "Four years already that you're far from home but always in our thoughts and our hearts."
What is not visible in the picture, Yami shared in the comments: the airport guard wouldn't let her through while she was desperate to reach her son. "It was terrible, the guard wouldn't let me pass and I was going crazy to hug my son, it's very tough," the creator wrote in response to a user.
A witness confirmed being close to her that day: "I was near that lady that day; I had to hold back my tears."
Yami also described the intensity of the bond with her son: "We are very dependent on each other; you can imagine, every time I watch the video, I cry. I can’t get used to him being far away; it’s so hard."
The phrase that resonated most with users was her response to another comment: “It's very painful, only a mother knows how much it hurts to be away from her child”.
The comments on the video became a mirror of the collective pain of the Cuban diaspora.
Someone wrote: "These videos are so powerful; I would give my life to be able to hug my mom." Another Cuban shared that she has been away from her mother for three years and "can’t wait" to hug her.
This type of reunions at Cuban airports has become a sustained viral trend on TikTok during 2025 and 2026, with cases that gather anywhere from thousands to over 65 million views.
Last Wednesday, another Cuban who returned from Uruguay after three years shouting "Mom!" garnered more than 407,100 views in just a few hours, and days earlier a Cuban mother reunited with her daughter in an equally heart-wrenching scene.
The phenomenon reflects a harsh reality: since 2021, over a million Cubans have left the island, driven by the economic crisis, power outages, and repression, which has reduced the effective population of the country from 11.3 million to between 8.6 and 8.8 million inhabitants.
Approximately 38% of Cuban families have one or more members living abroad, making prolonged separation an everyday experience for millions of people.
The Frank País Airport in Holguín, the setting for this reunion, operates between 55 and 60 international flights weekly to destinations such as Miami, Toronto, and other Canadian cities, and its arrivals area has become one of the most emotional —and most filmed— locations in Cuba.
Yami summed it up with a simplicity that thousands of Cubans abroad felt as their own: "Four years apart because of distance, but you are always with me, child of my soul."
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