“Finally, I’m in Cuba, after three years I get to hug my mom again,” wrote @daimylydom, a Cuban émigré who posted the third chapter of her video series about her return to the island yesterday, documenting the surprise reunions with her family after three years of being away.
Only her parents and a neighbor knew that she had arrived.
From the airport, the young woman went straight to her aunt's house, and she had to gesture to her cousin to keep quiet and not reveal her presence.
"Her reaction was the one that moved me the most," she confessed about that moment.
In the video of just over a minute, the creator reflects on what those hugs mean for those who remained on the island: "I realized that, no matter how much they missed me, in each of those hugs they saw reflected the one they have far away."
"I let myself be embraced, and I also hugged them a lot; I allowed them to feel that in some way they were embracing those they miss so much," he recounts.
The author also describes the strangeness of geographical distance: "I still find it difficult to process how in less than two hours of flight, our reality changes so much."
The video is part of a trend that has emerged on TikTok during 2025 and 2026, where Cuban emigrants document their returns to the island after years of family separation.
On May 7th, another Cuban returned to the island shouting "mami" in a surprise reunion that also touched thousands of followers on the platform.
On May 5th, the entire neighborhood took to the streets to welcome another emigrant who was returning, in a video that also went viral.
The phenomenon reflects the human impact of the largest migratory exodus in the history of Cuba: between 2022 and 2023, more than one million Cubans left the island, reducing the population from 11,181,595 inhabitants in December 2021 to just over 10 million in December 2023, according to official data from the National Office of Statistics and Information.
That massive separation, driven by the economic crisis, blackouts, shortages, and political repression, has left almost every Cuban family with at least one member living abroad.
"Every Cuban has someone they long to embrace," says @daimylydom in the video, in a phrase that encapsulates the shared pain of a nation fragmented by migration.
The video concludes with a message directed at all those who are still waiting for that moment: "Hopefully, for all those who have that long-awaited hug, it will come true very soon."
Filed under: