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The journalist Yoani Sánchez published a piece this week in 14ymedio that depicts the brutal clash experienced by a Cuban who emigrated when returning to Havana after more than two decades away: empty refrigerators, blackouts that halt payment terminals, a young man in rags who cries upon receiving a sandwich, and guards exercising their minimal power by leaving people under the sun.
The protagonist is a childhood friend of Sánchez who has been living in Stockholm, Sweden, for over twenty years, and who returned to Cuba due to her grandmother's death. "The first thing is to make it clear to her that the country she remembers no longer exists, that the nation she treasures in her memory has long since disappeared," writes the journalist.
In the first few days, the visitor enjoyed the digital disconnection and savored tropical fruits with excitement. But, as Sánchez recounts, "reality began to seep in like corrosive acid through the cracks of her illusion."
The first blow came at the La Mariposa market, on Tulipán Street: all the refrigerators were empty, lacking meat, butter, sausages, and fish. Inspired by what she had read online, her friend suggested going to another store on 26th Street, supposedly well-stocked with Spanish products. On the way, the Acapulco cinema—where the visitor had shared her first kiss as a teenager—loomed with its lobby in darkness and a smell of urine seeping under the door.
Near the Chinese cemetery, a man under 30 dressed in rags offered an azalea flower and immediately asked for "something to eat." The friend handed him a bag with a can of soda and a sandwich. The young man broke down in tears. "Those are the tears of hunger," Sánchez had to clarify.
In the dollar market located in front of the building that was Raúl Castro's house, a dozen people waited outdoors. An elderly woman in line explained that the staff were manually recording the sales from the previous day because they had lost electricity. Shortly after, the power went out again, and an employee informed that they could not process card payments "because when there is no electricity, the reader does not work."
Sánchez points out the paradox with concrete data: a backup battery for the payment terminal would cost "a few hundred dollars," while GAESA —the military conglomerate that controls approximately 70% of the dollarized economy— loses "tens or hundreds of thousands" daily by not investing in that backup. "Greed and negligence; predation and incapacity, all together packaged in an olive green uniform," he writes about the conglomerate, identified as one of the main culprits of hunger in Cuba.
The journey ended in a market in El Vedado, where a security guard closed the door in front of the two women and forced them to wait outside for over ten minutes, with the store empty of customers. Sánchez noted during his visit that most of the glass doors had been boarded up, and some were covered with metal plates "to prevent stone-throwing." "The Castro regime has always feared the people," he concludes. "In El Laguito, they must have nightmares about a mob breaking through the gates of dollar markets, government offices, and palaces."
The report is published when fewer and fewer emigrated Cubans return to the island: in 2025, 228,091 people returned, which is about 66,725 fewer than in 2024. A survey from the Food Monitor Program in May revealed that 33.9% of households reported that at least one person went to bed without eating in 2025, and 89% of the population lives in extreme poverty according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights.
At the end of the journey, the friend let out what Sánchez describes as "a roar of despair" and begged, "Let's go, I can't take it anymore." The journalist concludes with a phrase that sums it all up: "Reality itself has made it clear that the country she remembers no longer exists."
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