Martha is 77 years old, has three children, and a routine that dismantles any official narrative about social justice in Cuba. She leaves at two in the morning from the neighborhood of La Prueba in Santiago de Cuba, pushing a wheelbarrow for nearly 15 kilometers to sell okra and earn money for food.
The independent activist Yasser Sosa Tamayo found it this Saturday, on the eve of Mother's Day, while selling okra for 200 pesos each and 100 pesos per jar.
In the middle of the street, he surprised her with a bag of basic groceries that included rice, spaghetti, eggs, and detergent.
The video published on Facebook has surpassed 53,000 views and sparked thousands of reactions, as it displayed, without makeup or slogans, a reality that the official narrative seeks to normalize: elderly women forced to continue working physically at extreme ages to avoid falling into misery.
"Fighting to eat. To eat, because life is tough," said Martha in front of the camera, with the ease of someone who has been surviving for years without waiting for solutions from anyone.
Sosa Tamayo later summarized the prevailing sentiment in the comments. "The saddest thing is not that Martha walks 14.8 kilometers. The saddest thing is that at 77 years old, she still has to do it to survive."
Among the reactions, Leandro Ramo Ruiz's stood out, as he wrote: "It's just a small ray of light; but in the darkness we live in, it appears like a blinding torrent."
The publication concluded with a phrase that ultimately became a portrait of contemporary Cuba: "There are countries where grandmothers rest. In Cuba, many still survive."
Martha's story is not moving because it is exceptional. It is moving because in Cuba, it ceased to be exceptional a long time ago.
A survey conducted by the Independent Trade Union Association of Cuba among 506 retirees across five provinces revealed that 99% believe their pension does not cover basic needs, and 90.7% continue working after retirement, primarily in the informal economy.
The minimum pension was raised to 4,000 pesos in August 2025, but that money doesn't last even a week. A croqueta costs 150 pesos, a loaf of bread 140, and the basic basket in Havana is estimated at 12,000 pesos per person per month, three times that minimum pension.
The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimates that 79% of people over 70 years old cannot have three meals a day, in a country where 89% of the population lives in extreme poverty.
This Mother's Day arrives marked by hardship throughout the island. In Sancti Spíritus, a crafts fair was denounced for its unaffordable prices for those earning the average salary of 6,930 pesos. "Art for the moms of the wealthy," wrote a citizen.
In Santiago de Cuba, a mother sent an anonymous letter to the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel asking, "How do I explain hunger to a 7-year-old child?" while the regime insists on "creative resistance."
The same city where Martha wakes up at two in the morning is also the one where young people have taken to distributing food in the absence of state responses, and where Sosa Tamayo documented in April the case of a 14-year-old adolescent who was selling polvorones in a park to help his mother.
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