A Cuban identified as Yuni Rodríguez posted a video this Friday in which she tearfully recounts the moment when a child from a special school in the Bahía neighborhood of La Habana del Este approached her on the street and asked for money to eat.
In the video shared on his Facebook profile, Rodríguez describes how the child gave him "a sad little face" and asked him, "Do you have any money to give me for food?".
The woman, who has two children that attended the same special school, claims that the scene "totally overwhelmed" her.
"Is this Cuba? Wow, it’s unbelievable. It really has no name, gentlemen," she says, visibly affected in the recording.
Rodríguez clarified that he did not film the moment he gave money to the child because, in his words, "good things are done from the heart and you don’t have to publicize them anywhere, because up there, there is a God."
What she did decide to share was her shock: "This was the saddest scene I have ever witnessed in Cuba, literally," she stated, adding that she wished she could help all the scholarship students at that special school.
The comments on the video confirm that the situation is not an isolated case. "Here in Matanzas, you'll find a child asking for money on every corner," wrote one user.
Another noted having seen him "many times here in Havana and at the traffic lights." A third pointed out that many of these children are "sent by their parents," which adds a layer of familial exploitation to the phenomenon.
The case adds to a series of similar situations documented in recent weeks. An 11-year-old boy from Camagüey was found collecting cans in the early morning two kilometers from his home to help his mother.
An eight-year-old girl from Bayamo lives in extreme poverty with more than 50 days without drinking water and an empty refrigerator, prompting a citizen campaign that raised 401,000 pesos in just two days.
In April, another Cuban woman found a child who had asked her for food on the street and whose greatest fear was that they would take his mother away.
The Cuban Observatory of Conflicts recorded 71 reports of child labor and begging in 2025 alone, and the regime itself acknowledged at the end of that year that nearly 200,000 children and adolescents were in a state of vulnerability.
Cuban special schools, which serve approximately 57,600 children with special educational needs, are also experiencing the collapse of the system: the school year ended early in May, three months sooner than planned, due to a lack of fuel.
The monthly stipend for children on scholarships in these institutions is only 120 Cuban pesos, less than a dollar, an amount that makes it impossible to meet their basic nutritional needs.
The Food Monitor Program warned in June that 90% of the primary schools analyzed lacked stable access to drinking water or safe protein, and that 78% of households need to supplement the children's diet because the school lunch is insufficient.
According to the organization, "in this context, hidden hunger and forms of child labor are on the rise, often justified as 'family assistance,' but which shift adult responsibilities onto children."
The contrast with the official discourse is stark. On June 12, World Day Against Child Labor, the Union of Young Communists declared that "thanks to the Revolution, child labor is not a reality in our country," a statement that sparked a wave of outrage and contradictory testimonies on social media.
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