Maura, an anesthesiologist with decades of professional experience, walks through the streets of Camagüey carrying bags full of cans that she collects one by one to sell as recyclable raw material in order to survive.
His story was shared on Facebook by the activist Christian Arbolaez (text) and David Vela (video), and it moved thousands of people due to the stark contrast between his professional career and his current situation.
According to the post by Arbolaez on Facebook, Maura is 73 years old, continues to work despite having already presented her retirement, but neither her salary nor her pension is enough to cover her basic needs.
Anesthesiology is one of the most demanding and best-paid medical specialties in the world, but in Cuba, practitioners earn between 5,000 and 8,000 Cuban pesos (CUP) per month, equivalent to between ten and twenty dollars at the unofficial exchange rate.
The basic basket for two people exceeds 41,000 CUP per month, which means that the salary of a specialist doctor covers less than 20% of what is needed to feed a family.
Maura's two daughters also pursued careers in medicine: one is a doctor and the other is a nurse. A whole family dedicated for decades to caring for the health of others, and yet reality forced Maura to go out and scavenge for cans on the streets.
Those who encountered her in recent days were impressed not only by her story but also by her serenity and poise. A couple stopped to give her money; she graciously thanked them and continued on her way with the bags in hand.
"It hurts to see a woman with so much education and so many values end up searching for cans to eat. It hurts because we are not talking about someone who chose not to work. We are talking about a highly qualified specialist," wrote Arbolaez.
Maura's case is not isolated. A Cuban doctor showed how she spends her entire salary in just one day, and similar cases of professionals living in poverty have been documented in recent months.
Retirement pensions, even after the adjustment in September 2025, do not exceed 4,000 CUP per month, an amount that barely covers a minimal fraction of basic needs. Before that adjustment, the minimum pension was just 1,528 CUP, less than five dollars.
The crisis in the healthcare sector is further exacerbated because the Cuban government maintains more than 24,000 doctors deployed to 56 countries as a source of foreign currency, while the internal system collapses. In 2024, the number of doctors in Cuba decreased by 5,399 compared to the previous year.
Cuban Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa acknowledged in February 2025 that "one cannot live on a salary of 6,000 pesos," an admission that has not led to any structural solutions for workers in the sector.
Arbolaez closed his publication with a question that encapsulates the outrage of those who learned about Maura's story: "How is it possible that a 73-year-old anesthesiologist has to collect cans to survive?"
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