A Cuban resident in Florida identified as D'yeny (@yenisley_85) posted a video on TikTok yesterday in which she expresses her frustration towards compatriots in Cuba who, according to her, are asking for things in a brazen and limitless manner, igniting a wide-ranging debate within the Cuban diaspora community.
The trigger was that four people agreed on the same day to ask her for things simultaneously, including a relative whose persistence caught her by surprise.
"Today, four of them agreed to ask. So when you tell them you don’t have it, they give you a hard time: 'Hey, it's only a little of what I need,'" D'yeny recounted in the video, recorded during a break in his workday.
The content creator, who has been 22 years outside of Cuba, clarified from the outset that her complaint is not directed at her immediate family, who "know where to draw the line," but rather at acquaintances and people in her circle who contact her solely to ask for favors.
"I'm not talking about my family; I'm speaking in general about everyone," he specified.
In response to the relative's insistence, D'yeny replied directly: "Look over here, go to the malecón and start showing off. Just stand there at the malecón, stick out your finger, and show off."
The response generated an immediate scandal, but she justified it with her own story: "When I was sixteen, when I realized the situation in which Cuba was — that Cuba has always been like that — I took that same route, went to the malecón, and rode away; I left Cuba when I was eighteen."
D'yeny does not downplay the crisis the island is experiencing and describes it bluntly: "There is no gas, no electricity, no water, no food, no medicine, no clothing, no life."
However, he warns that this reality does not justify turning emigrants into an inexhaustible source of resources: "We who are out here, if we allow it, we become slaves, slaves to all those people."
The video is not an isolated incident. In March, a Cuban woman in the United States exploded on TikTok because her relatives only called her to ask for money and never to check on how she was doing.
On May 13, another Cuban exploded against those asking for money from the island for non-essential expenses like beer.
The phenomenon reflects a growing tension within the Cuban diaspora, exacerbated by the depth of the crisis on the island: in 2026, only 18.3% of the population receives drinking water daily, compared to 34.1% in 2024, and 33.9% of households report that at least one person went to bed hungry in the past year.
This extreme precariousness pushes many families to depend almost exclusively on remittances from abroad, which fuels the cycle of requests that exhausts a significant portion of the emigrants.
D'yeny closed the video with a mix of relief and challenge: "What kind of nonsense. But I'm here to tell you all this, partly to let off steam and partly so you can see that I really am crazy, that I tell everyone, that they're a bunch of shameless people."
Filed under: