A grandmother from Santiago de Cuba became a symbol of the collective sorrow of the Island after a video on Facebook was published, showing her welcoming a boy of about nine years old who arrived alone at her door asking for food, as he hadn't eaten anything all day.
"She came alone, asking for food, because she hasn't eaten anything today," the woman recounts, visibly on the verge of tears. The scene took place on Mother's Day 2026, a date that brought not celebration but hunger for thousands of Cuban families.
"That breaks my heart, but no, if we are going to give them food and we are at my house where we still have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but how many unfortunate children have nothing to eat?" says the woman, who immediately starts preparing milk with custard, cookies, and beans with tomatoes for the little one.
"We're going to give her milk, cookies, beans with tomatoes, and we're going to give her a lot of love," she adds, as she tries to overcome her anguish.
The video was published by the parish priest Leandro NaunHung, who accompanied the images with a reflection: “I think with pain and helplessness of the thousands of Cuban mothers and grandmothers who today will have no gifts and will not be able to give a meal to their children and grandchildren.”
This testimony is not an isolated case. On April 5th, the Cuban Yai Savon documented a similar moment when two children knocked on her door asking for "an old bread, a banana, anything." And on April 25th, the case of a girl named Ariana circulated, showing clear signs of severe malnutrition.
The numbers support what these videos show. According to the survey "There is Hunger in Cuba 2025" from the Food Monitor Program and Cuido60, published on May 4th, 33.9% of Cuban households reported that a member went to bed hungry at least once in the last 30 days, an increase of 9.3 percentage points compared to 2024.
The report describes the situation as a "critical food insecurity" and a "humanitarian emergency."
96.91% of the population lacks adequate access to food, and 80% of Cubans believe that the current crisis is worse than the Special Period of the 1990s.
The impact on childhood is particularly severe. The World Food Program notes that 48.5% of Cuban students aged 6 to 11 do not receive any food or snacks at school.
UNICEF included Cuba for the first time in its global analysis on child food poverty, indicating that 9% of children under five suffer from severe nutritional deprivation. The National Office of Statistics and Information also recorded a 74% increase in deaths due to malnutrition between 2022 and 2023, rising from 43 to 75 cases.
The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimates that 89% of the population lives in extreme poverty, with an average salary equivalent to just 13 dollars per month, while a family needs between 10 and 11 times that minimum wage to access a basic food basket.
In Santiago de Cuba, on Mother's Day itself, fainting due to hunger was reported and people were seen picking up food from the ground, a stark image that encapsulates the severity of the crisis the Island is experiencing after 67 years of dictatorship.
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