Cuban actress Sandra Pérez posted a video on her Instagram account this Tuesday in which her 95-year-old mother clearly expresses her greatest wish: to see Cuba free from the dictatorship.
In the emotional clip shared on Instagram, Sandra asks her mother —whom she affectionately calls "Mimi"— what she would most like to see happen with Cuba. The elderly woman's answer leaves no room for doubt: "That it be liberated."
When her daughter asks her what she thinks is the only possible path, the woman responds without hesitation: "For the dictatorship to end."
The actress takes the opportunity to send a direct message to her followers: "You see? Even my mom knows it. And the only way to end the dictatorship is for you to lose your fear and go out into the streets."
The followers' reaction was immediate and emotional. Dozens of comments highlighted the clarity of the actress's mother at nearly one hundred years of age. "She's very clear-minded," wrote one user. Another commented, "So beautiful and so clear at almost a century old. God bless her." A third expressed, "Bless your mom, tell her I'm sending a little kiss with much respect and love from a 37-year-old grandson, a true-bred Cuban."
Sandra Pérez's call to "lose the fear and take to the streets" resonates with the message of the Cuban diaspora, which, since the protests of July 11, 2021, contends that citizen mobilization is the only true path to change on the island.
The voice of her 95-year-old mother, with nearly a century of life experience, adds a dimension to that message that her followers quickly recognized: "How beautiful and how powerful to say Long Live Free Cuba."
The video joins a growing trend in recent years: elderly Cubans publicly expressing their desire to see a free Cuba before they die. Last January, a 90-year-old Cuban grandmother went viral when she confessed, "I hope I can go to Cuba before I die and see it free, free."
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