A Cuban content creator based in Spain summarized, in just over a minute, the pain shared by millions of compatriots in the diaspora: the anguish of having to leave the island, the broken family, and the helplessness in the face of a dictatorship that does not allow for a voice to be raised.
Lesyanis Portilla (@lesyanisportilla) published a video on TikTok on June 16 filled with unanswered questions that, as she admits herself, she has been asking for years. "You know how many times I have asked myself, why? Why did I have to take all my memories, my childhood in a suitcase and emigrate," she says at the beginning of the recording.
The Cuban woman lists the losses that came with the decision to leave: her mother, her daughter, her grandmother, and her brothers, all of whom remained in Cuba. "Why did I have to leave a country because of a dictatorship?" she asks, her voice trembling.
Portilla also describes the stigma she carries every time she presents herself to someone abroad. “Why does it sound like misery when we talk about being Cuban? Why is it that whenever I arrive somewhere and say I’m Cuban, everyone has to ask me, oh, how is Cuba? How is your country? How resilient are Cubans?”
The question that is asked most frequently in the video is "How long?" "How long are we going to have to live in distance? How long are we going to have to endure suffering, misery, need?" Portilla states, without finding an answer.
The testimony concludes with a direct accusation against the regime: "Why did I have to leave my island because of a dictator who won't even let me raise my voice to ask for freedom?"
The closing of the video encapsulates in a few words the sentiment of an entire generation forced into exile: "I don't know if you wonder the same thing, but it's a feeling I can't explain to you. And it hurts to be Cuban, it hurts."
Portilla has accumulated 234,500 followers on TikTok and 2.3 million "likes," and this isn't the first time his words have resonated with the diaspora. In December 2025, he went viral with a video from Spain in which he debunked the myth of "free education" in Cuba, and in August of that same year, he had already explained that he emigrated because the island "not only took away my food," but also prevented him from accessing things that were offered to tourists in his own country.
The video is part of a sustained trend among the Cuban diaspora that uses TikTok to collectively process the migratory mourning: farewells at airports, years-long separations, and testimonials of pain that resonate with thousands of compatriots scattered around the world.
The context surrounding that pain is devastating. Between 2021 and 2024, more than 1.79 million Cubans left the island, the largest exodus in the country's history. The resident population fell to 9.6 million inhabitants in 2025, and more than 25% of those remaining in Cuba are 65 years or older, reflecting the accelerated aging due to the emigration of young people.
In 2024 alone, it is estimated that 545,011 Cubans left the island, and in the first four months of 2026, Cubans accounted for 58% of all asylum applications in Brazil, surpassing Venezuelans for the first time. The phrase with which Portilla concludes his video —"it hurts to be Cuban, it hurts"— resonates as a summary of that collective pain accumulated over decades of dictatorship.
Filed under: