A Cuban woman identified on TikTok as @laura_sin_filtros published a 37-second video last Saturday in which she names something that many emigrants feel but rarely voice out loud: the guilt that arises when one starts to progress abroad while their family remains in Cuba.
In the video posted on her TikTok account, Laura describes how the most ordinary moments—eating something, buying an item for the house—become triggers of anxiety: "you automatically think about whether my family will have something to eat today."
The dilemma it presents is not sentimental but structural: "You want to help, you want to lead, you want to solve everyone's problems, but at the same time, if you send everything over there, you'll never be able to build anything for yourself here."
Laura doesn't speak only for herself. "I believe that many emigrants live with that guilt constantly," she states in the video, naming a tension that affects thousands of Cubans abroad.
This tension has a specific economic dimension. According to data from elTOQUE, 92% of the remittances received by Cuba come from the United States, and Cubans in Miami send an average of 2,165 dollars a year to their families, combining cash, top-ups, and shipments in kind.
The typical remittance is around 132 dollars, about ten times a year, and accounts for between 6% and 13% of the emigrant's total income, which is below the global average of 15%.
This economic pressure turns every personal spending decision into an act laden with guilt: every peso that the emigrant invests in themselves is a peso that does not reach Cuba, where shortages, power outages, and years of accumulated crisis have left millions of families relying almost exclusively on what their relatives send from abroad.
The phenomenon described by Laura has a name in migration psychology: "migratory grief," a concept that refers to the multiple losses experienced by those who emigrate—such as family, language, social networks, and status—which can lead to feelings of guilt and anxiety, especially when the emigrant perceives that their progress contrasts with the struggles faced by those left behind.
It's not the first Cuban to use TikTok to highlight these emotional dimensions. A Cuban mother in the United States with children in Cuba shared the same feelings of guilt and abandonment caused by distance last May. A Cuban in Spain revealed her fears about emigrating this January, and another one in Italy shared that she has felt out of place for nine years while trying to adapt.
These testimonies have resonated widely within the Cuban community abroad, sparking debates about the immigrant's responsibility towards their family and their right to build their own life.
Laura closes her video with a phrase that functions almost like a manifesto: "Emigrating is also about learning to build a life without feeling guilty for every good thing that happens to you."
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