A father in Santiago de Cuba went out onto the street one Sunday afternoon, carrying his young daughter in his arms and trying to sell two electrical outlets, with the sole purpose of raising money to buy spaghetti and feed his four children. The scene was captured on video by Noel Borges and shared on his Facebook profile.
According to the man himself, who recounted this to Borges, one of his sons has autism, and the entire family is sheltered in a school due to a lack of housing, struggling to provide food for the children.
"What are you selling?" "Two electrical outlets from your house, from your house. To buy, at least, two packets of spaghetti to feed your little girl," Borges described in the video while focusing on the man and the child.
Borges, who recorded the meeting from his own home in Santiago de Cuba, decided to intervene immediately and gave them a liter of oil, cookies, a piece of ham, a package of spaghetti, a package of rice, and five little packets of soda.
In addition, he returned the outlets with a direct warning: "Take it and don’t sell it, because you’re going to need it at home later."
"Feed the children today, and tomorrow, and well, we'll see what else happens tomorrow," Borges said as he closed the gesture.
The video's author explained his motivation clearly: "I do it to help those children who are not at fault for anything, nor do they understand the situation we are living."
The story of this father is not an isolated case. The sale of household belongings—appliances, furniture, even entire homes—has become a common survival strategy in Cuba. Recently, an oncologist from the Isle of Youth was fined in 2026 for selling used clothing to be able to eat, in another incident that went viral on social media.
The food crisis affecting the Island is the most severe in decades. According to the Food Monitor Program, 96-97% of Cubans have lost purchasing power for food, and 33.9% of households reported that a member went to bed hungry in the last 30 days, compared to 24.6% recorded in 2024. 9% of children under five suffer from severe nutritional deprivation, and almost half of primary school students do not receive food at school.
National agricultural production has declined by 67% in the last five years, and Cuba imports approximately 80% of what it consumes. The military conglomerate GAESA has been identified by independent organizations as responsible for exacerbating the crisis by monopolizing foreign exchange, imports, and food distribution.
The housing crisis further exacerbates the situation: thousands of families remain housed in temporary centers following hurricanes Oscar and Melissa in 2024 and 2025, a circumstance that the father in the video described as his own.
Eighty percent of Cubans believe that the current situation is worse than the Special Period of the 1990s, according to data from 2026. Meanwhile, child labor is on the rise on the Island, with documented cases of children aged 10 and 14 working on the streets to help support their families.
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