A young content creator from the Instagram profile Realmente Cubanos approached an elderly man in a rural area of Cuba with the intention of playing a joke about the price of oil, but what he found was a story of loneliness and resilience that touched thousands of people on social media.
According to the author himself in the publication, the idea was a "hidden camera" in which he would propose that the man trade a bicycle for a bit of oil.
The elder's response brought him to a standstill: "Damn, I don't even have oil for myself. I'm alone. My daughter died, my wife."
The man is 96 years old. He lives alone in the countryside, cultivates his own land, and has no family support. He lost his wife and also his daughter, whom he described as his closest support: “She was my strong arm. We must keep moving forward and fight.”
"What was meant to be a hidden camera segment turned into a sad story that the world should hear. 96 years lived, 96 years of hard and difficult moments," wrote the creator of the reel, which garnered over 11,000 reactions and 853 comments.
The 26-year-old young man admitted to feeling guilty upon realizing the magnitude of what he had in front of him.
"When the gentleman told me his story, I felt incredibly guilty for bothering him, when behind that strong exterior lay an immense pain from 96 years of age," he wrote in the description of the reel.
At the end of the meeting, the creator of the video asked the elderly man for a hug and reflected aloud: "Sometimes we say, I'm stubborn, I don't know what, but there's always someone who is worse off than we are. Just look at the story he has."
The elderly man, for his part, did not break down. Before saying goodbye, he summed up his existence with a brief and striking phrase: "Me, kid, 96 years and counting."
The video is set against a backdrop of extreme scarcity. Vegetable oil has become one of the most inaccessible products in Cuba in 2026.
After the removal of price caps on imported cooking oils, the price per liter rose from around 1,500 pesos in April to over 2,500 pesos in Havana in July, and reached between 4,000 and 5,000 pesos in some areas at the beginning of August.
The Minister of Food Industry, Alberto López Díaz, admitted that no oil had been distributed through the supply booklet throughout 2026.
For a man nearing a hundred years old who lives alone in the countryside and relies on what he grows, that basic product is completely out of reach.
The government of Guantánamo set a reference price of 2,200 pesos per unit on Tuesday, although it is not mandatory as a cap.
The story of the elderly man is not an isolated case. In recent months, testimonials from other elderly Cubans in situations of abandonment have circulated on social media, ranging from a 92-year-old woman begging on the street to an 83-year-old man in Ciego de Ávila who had gone days without eating.
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