A Cuban woman identified as Yelenys shared on TikTok the emotional moment when her baby arrives in Cuba to meet her maternal grandmother, who receives her with tears, unable to contain her emotion.
The little girl traveled to the island with her father, who handed her over to her grandmother. The mother could not accompany them and explained her absence with a phrase that summed up the pain of thousands of Cuban families separated by emigration: "I couldn’t go, but I sent a little piece of myself."
In the fifty-second video, a voice can be heard exclaiming as the grandmother holds the girl: "My love. My love. My grandmother. She seems to live here. Codrita!"
The grandmother embraces her granddaughter, inhales her scent, and cries without being able to let her go, in a scene that thousands of Cubans abroad recognize as their own.
Behind this story lies a reality faced by many emigrant Cuban mothers: those with active immigration processes in the United States —parole, I-220A, asylum applications, or pending residency— cannot travel to Cuba without risking their legal status, as returning to their country of origin may be interpreted as evidence that they do not need international protection.
This legal barrier is compounded by the high costs of tickets, which in the recent migration context have hovered around 1,200 dollars from Havana, a figure that is unattainable for many families.
This type of story has become a recurring phenomenon within the Cuban community on TikTok. In December 2025, another Cuban woman let her son go to Cuba with his father so he could meet his grandmother while she waited for her residency approval.
In January 2026, a young woman brought her four-month-old baby to Cuba so that the grandmother could meet him for the first time, in another video that sparked a strong reaction among the diaspora.
In April 2026, a Cuban named Naiky sent baby clothes to her mother in Cuba so that she could "feel her grandson close," in another viral moment that resonated with the same collective sentiment.
The hashtag #cubanosporelmundo gathers thousands of videos on TikTok where Cuban emigrants share moments of separation, reunion, and nostalgia. It has become the digital space where the diaspora processes a familial fracture that the dictatorship and its economic consequences have made structural.
A Cuban mother who explained the reasons why she has not been able to return to the island summarized the dilemma faced by many: "I don't want to miss out on years."
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