A Cuban mother captured in a single image the exhaustion of thousands of families on the island: sitting in a rocking chair, fanning her five-year-old daughter who is asleep in her lap, amidst the suffocating heat of a day without electricity.
Elizeida Rueda, originally from Guantánamo and residing in Havana, posted the photograph on her Facebook profile along with a very touching text.
“How do I explain to a 5-year-old girl that 'there is none' is all that we have left?”, Rueda wrote at the beginning of his post.
The image of this mother cradling her little one, who barely fits in her lap while she tries to offer her some comfort with a fan, is very moving.
"This photo summarizes my nights. She, with her innocence, asks me why there is no electricity, why I can't turn on the fan so she can sleep without sweating, and why she can't watch her cartoons to keep herself entertained," he recounted.
Rueda, who according to her profile is a medical graduate and currently works as a manicurist in Havana, described the helplessness of not having answers for her daughter: "And for me, as I hold her in my arms, fanning her to relieve the heat, my heart breaks."
Her post concluded with a phrase that encapsulates the feelings of many Cuban parents: "No child should know what suffocating heat and darkness feel like as something normal. I have no answers for her, only hugs and the greatest helplessness in this world. This is not life for them."
In the comments, she added another equally heartbreaking reflection: «No mother should spend the night fanning her child amidst sweat and tears, inventing lies to justify the darkness. The childhood of our children cannot be regained.»
"The childhood of our children cannot be regained," Rueda emphasized in his comments, a phrase that, for many Cuban families, no longer sounds like a metaphor but rather a diagnosis.
The testimony arrives at one of the worst moments of the Cuban electricity crisis. So far in July 2026, the National Electric System has completely collapsed at least three times: on the 6th, the 10th, and the 14th of July.
Rueda's pain is not an isolated incident.
Other Cuban mothers have documented similar situations on social media in recent months: a mother who fanned her four-year-old daughter for more than 30 hours during a power outage, another whose one-year-old baby slept on a cot in the yard after hours without electricity, or yet another whose one-year-old son could not stay inside the house due to the unbearable heat.
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