The situation of three little siblings living in absolute poverty in Holguín was documented on Instagram by the content creator known as Melissa, in a video that turned into a heartbreaking testimony of the forgotten childhood in Cuba.
The children, aged 13, nine, and seven, live with their mother in a settlement located behind Loma de la Cruz, in an area of wilderness with no basic services or access to communication.
"This neighborhood is located behind the Loma de la Cruz, deep into the countryside as we Cubans say. They don’t even have an address," explained the video’s author.
The interior structure of the home is almost entirely made of cardboard. The family has no electricity: the children themselves confirm this in the video with a phrase that summarizes their daily life: "There’s never any power. The mosquitoes."
The oldest one walks over two kilometers every day to gather pumpkins to feed his siblings. When asked what they eat, the reply is as brief as it is harsh: "A few things. Sometimes coconut, mango, and that. Well, no. And sometimes nothing."
The mother reported that she does not have a checkbook and does not receive any assistance from the government.
Melissa acted as an intermediary to transfer donated money from abroad.
The influencer invites those who wish to collaborate to contact her directly, as the family lacks any means of communication of their own.
The case is no exception in Holguín. In April, a solidarity campaign raised more than 3 million pesos for two siblings who were collecting firewood to cook.
In May, another fundraiser gathered over 1,137,000 pesos for a pair of siblings living in extreme poverty in the Paraíso neighborhood. The Cuban diaspora and social media activists have become the primary – and almost sole – means of assistance in the absence of government response.
The numbers behind these individual stories are equally alarming.
According to a UNICEF report from 2024, 9% of Cuban children under the age of five experience severe food insecurity, defined as consuming food from two or fewer of the eight essential food groups.
Data from 2026 indicate that 48.5% of Cuban students aged six to eleven do not receive school meals or snacks, and that 33.9% of households had at least one member who went to bed hungry in the previous 30 days.
The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimated in 2025 that 89% of the Cuban population lives in extreme poverty, a figure that stands in stark contrast to the official narrative.
While these three little siblings survive in the Holguin countryside, Miguel Díaz-Canel referred to Cuban children this month as "little giants, guardians of the future of the Homeland" and promised that the government would look after children "even in the toughest times", attributing the shortcomings to the U.S. embargo.
The images of the nameless neighborhood behind the Loma de la Cruz speak for themselves in response to those words.
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