A retired Cuban woman, professor and translator, who dedicated her life to working for the government, claims that today she cannot afford a proper meal.
His testimony, captured in a video posted on Facebook by activist Silverio Portal, has garnered over 306,000 views and has become a symbol of the neglect experienced by the elderly on the island.
Gloria Lozano asserts in the clip that she worked "for an indefinite period" in the general direction of personal security for Fidel Castro. Reflecting on that time, her assessment is emphatic: "Yes, it was wonderful." The contrast with her present could not be more striking.
In the video, Portal describes the woman's physical state with visible concern: "She has become skinny, Gloria. Skinny, skinny, skinny. And her feet are swollen. A personality like yours."
The elderly woman, visibly thin and with swollen feet, sums up her situation in one sentence: "I don't eat well. Just imagine, the system is broken."
Portal hands her the only 100 Cuban pesos he has on him. "I'm going to give you this 100 pesos, I don't have more, but well, with that," he says. She replies without hesitation: "For me, any money is welcome."
Despite the hardships, Gloria maintains a surprising attitude: "Life has made me happy, very happy," she asserts. She claims to be alive and to have friendships in Cuba and abroad who ask her about her life with the commander.
The case of Gloria is not an exception. A survey by the Food Monitor Program and Cuido60 presented in May 2026 revealed that 33.9% of Cuban households reported that at least one person went to bed hungry in the past 30 days, a decline of 9.3 percentage points compared to 2024.
Elderly adults are the most affected group. Among those over 60 years old, 55.6% reported total loss of access to food, 53% allocate all their income to food, and 80.2% have difficulties obtaining essential medications.
The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights indicates that eight out of ten people over 61 often skip breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
The official minimum pension is 4,000 Cuban pesos per month —about seven to ten dollars at the informal exchange rate— while the basic basket in Havana costs around 12,000 pesos per person, three times more than that minimum income.
The food collapse has structural roots. Cuba imports between 70% and 80% of what it consumes, and national production has declined in basic goods such as rice, beans, pork, and milk. In June, regime officials admitted that the rationed basket had not distributed essential products such as oil, chicken, and yogurt.
Silverio Portal, who has been recording and sharing these street testimonies for years, is a Cuban political prisoner recognized by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience in 2019. He was sentenced to four years in 2016 and released in December 2020.
The testimony of Gloria Lozano—a woman who served the revolutionary state for decades and today struggles to eat well—harshly summarizes what the data confirms: the Cuban regime has abandoned those who invested the most in it.
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