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The Cuban community residing in Chile managed to raise the necessary funds to cremate the body of Yudisleidy Rodríguez Castellón, a 41-year-old Cuban who passed away in Santiago, and send her ashes to Cuba, confirmed this Friday the Facebook group Cubanos en Iquique.
"Thank you to all the people who donated from different parts of Chile. We will be sharing, once the complete process of sending the ashes and belongings to the family in Cuba is accomplished, how the resources were used," detailed the user Catalina Bosch Carcuro.
The announcement comes just a day after the family made an urgent appeal for help, with barely 48 hours to meet Chilean health regulations to cover the 1,200,000 Chilean pesos (around 1,320 dollars) that the cremation and associated processes would cost.
Yudisleidy suffered complications from a cerebral aneurysm while in Chile. According to Zailín Montesinos's account in the Facebook group, the woman was planning to travel to Cuba but could not board her flight because her passport had expired.
When she was trying to return to Iquique by bus, she collapsed and was rushed to the Posta Central in Santiago, where she remained in the intensive care unit in a state of coma.
The medical staff had difficulty locating relatives or acquaintances in Chile because the patient was alone in the country. A nurse managed to contact members of the Cuban community, who in turn established communication with Yudisleidy's mother in Cuba.
After confirming the death on Friday, Heidy Torres spread the call for help in the group Cubanos en Iquique. "We need to raise the money by the end of today," Torres wrote in the post.
On Thursday, when the outcome seemed imminent, the mother of the deceased, Belkis Castellón, made a public appeal "for help in repatriating my daughter's ashes. I am just a desperate mother wanting to feel her daughter close."
The chain of solidarity activated on social media allowed for funds to be raised in record time, fulfilling the family's wish for Yudisleidy's remains to return to the Island.
The case fits within a recurring pattern among the Cuban diaspora in Chile and Latin America, where migrants pass away alone, without close family in the country of residence and lacking resources to cover funeral and repatriation costs.
In the absence of state mechanisms that facilitate these processes, community groups on social media have become the main channel for assistance.
This is not the first case of this kind. In February 2024, friends of a Cuban woman who passed away in Arica, requested assistance to repatriate her body to the island, so that her mother and son could say their final goodbyes.
Shortly after, in June of the same year, a Cuban migrant died at the border between Chile and Bolivia under equally dramatic circumstances.
The Cuban community in Chile exceeds 21,300 people according to the National Immigration Service, with a significant concentration in Iquique and the Tarapacá region, which host approximately 10.8% of the estimated total of Cuban migrants in the country.
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