A Cuban boy living in Miami became the star of a viral video as he addressed the leader Miguel Díaz-Canel directly, urging him that children on the island do not have access to things he enjoys in his backyard in the United States.
The clip, posted on June 22 on TikTok by his mother under the username @miladysmoreno3, lasts only 39 seconds and shows the child listing what he has available: a barbecue, a bounce house, chairs, a motorcycle, a gym, and a basketball court.
"Look, Díaz-Canel, do you think the children in Cuba and the people in Cuba know what this is? Let the children of Cuba have this, because if not, I'm going to tell Donald Trump to take action," warns the child with a naturalness that shocked thousands of users. "And all of this in the yard of my house," he concludes at the end of the video.
His mother, identified as Miladys, explained in the video description the motivation behind the clip: "He always looks for an opportunity to talk about Cuba and why children cannot have the right to the most basic things that anyone can have here."
The video accumulated this Thursday 49,200 views, 3,163 likes, 245 comments, and 293 shares, figures that reflect the resonance of the message within the Cuban diaspora community.
The complaint from the minor is not an isolated case. In June 2025, another Cuban boy went viral with a similar message to Díaz-Canel, recorded after experiencing a brief power outage in an American shopping mall: "Hey Díaz-Canel, look, I bought a phone and here in the United States, the power doesn't go out," he said at the time, also asking that no more Cubans be deported to the island.
Both cases illustrate how a generation of Cuban children raised in exile has internalized the comparison between their lives outside the island and the crisis faced by their peers in Cuba, expressing it candidly on social media.
This crisis is devastating. According to data from the Food Monitor Program, 96.91% of the Cuban population lacked adequate access to food in April 2026. About 48.5% of students aged six to eleven do not receive any meals at school, over 100,000 children are not receiving the milk allocated by the state, and 9% of children under five suffer from severe nutrition deprivation, according to UNICEF. Power outages exceed 20 hours daily in some areas of the country.
The contrast is even more painful when recalling that on June 1, Díaz-Canel celebrated Cuban children, calling them “treasures”, while the reality faced by those same children on the island contradicts any official rhetoric.
In April 2026, a Cuban father residing in the United States also went viral on TikTok by showcasing the contrast between his childhood in Cuba —without a private room, single bed, air conditioning, or reliable food— and the life his daughters are enjoying outside the island today.
The infant mortality rate in Cuba doubled to reach 9.9 per 1,000 births in 2026, a figure that starkly summarizes what it means to grow up on the island under 67 years of communist dictatorship.
Filed under: