A Camagüeyana Cuban residing abroad published a video of less than a minute on TikTok on Saturday that captures in a heartbreaking manner what it means to say goodbye to family in Cuba and not knowing when one will see them again.
Naila Verdecia, known on social media by the handle @nailacubana, begins the clip with a phrase that many in the diaspora recognize as their own: "It hasn't been easy for Cubans in exile. It hasn't been easy."
The video first shows the airport scene: the protagonists inside, the family watching from outside, separated by glass and by kilometers of distance that have accumulated over the years. Then come the happy moments that are left behind: images of days spent together in Cuba, as a family, which make the contrast with the farewell even more painful.
In her narration, Naila directly addresses God: "Anything beautiful can happen in the world, but God must remember the Cubans, the children who want to see their mothers every day, the mothers who want to see their children every day, the grandparents who have died waiting for their grandchildren, and the grandchildren who haven't been able to go because their children have died. That's an abuse."
That phrase encapsulates a tragedy that is repeated in thousands of Cuban families torn apart by emigration.
The pain expressed by Naila is not individual: it is the portrait of a migratory crisis that has been accumulating for decades. More than 2.5 million Cubans live outside the island, and in 2024 alone, over 250,000 people emigrated according to official figures, although independent estimates raise that number to 545,000.
Paradoxically, those who left are visiting their loved ones less and less. In 2025, only 228,091 Cubans living abroad visited the island, a drop of 22.6% compared to the previous year, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information. In January 2026, this decline deepened by an additional 40.2%.
The high costs of tickets —which can exceed 1,000 dollars— and the economic situation in the country mean that many emigrants simply cannot return, even if they want to.
The result is a silent, everyday tragedy that TikTok has turned into a space for collective mourning: videos of farewells and reunions are constantly going viral among the diaspora, generating waves of empathy among those who see their own stories reflected in those images.
In April, a Cuban mother living in the United States posted another viral video saying goodbye to her son at the bus station in Havana with a phrase that also spread across social media: "I feel like the worst mother in the world because I have to leave him again."
Grandparents dying without seeing their grandchildren, children growing up without knowing their grandparents, mothers burdened with a guilt that isn't theirs to bear: this is the wound that the Cuban dictatorship has been inflicting for over six decades through its policies of repression and impoverishment, a wound that no airport in the world has been able to heal.
The video by Naila Verdecia garnered over 6,600 views and 334 reactions in just a few hours, with dozens of comments from Cubans who wrote one thing: that they had experienced it too.
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