A video posted this Tuesday on TikTok by the user @rachel.tellez2 is breaking the hearts of thousands of Cubans both on and off the island by recreating with heart-wrenching honesty the scene that hundreds of thousands of families have experienced: a mother saying goodbye to her son at the airport, unsure if she will ever see him again.
In the nearly three-minute clip, a Cuban mother tries to stay strong as she gives her son "Carlitos" his final instructions before he departs for Nicaragua, the first stop on his journey to the United States—"la yuma," as it's called on the island. Before he enters the boarding area, the woman asks her relative Yolanda not to make her cry: "All I need is for you to give me strength, give me strength. When Carlitos leaves, don’t start saying anything that will make me emotional, because you know I am strong. But just for a moment."
What follows is a series of practical instructions that conceal immense love and silent sacrifice.
The mother asks him to send her a photo immediately upon landing: "As soon as you arrive in Nicaragua, as soon as you see that man who's going to be waiting for you, you send me a photo and tell me, you get in the car, you get out, and send me a photo."
Knowing that her son will try to help her as soon as he can, she cuts him off firmly: "Don't you dare send me any rechargeable things. I still cook with firewood. I've been happy with firewood until now. I've never lacked anything. I need you to focus on yourself."
"I’m waiting here because I am strong for you," he repeats to his son before their final embrace, encouraging him with all that he has left: "Come on, my boy, give it your all, damn it, you are a strong man, you are a man. Keep going, keep going, because we don't believe in anyone."
But when the plane takes off, the fortress crumbles. The woman weeps inconsolably and utters the phrase that encapsulates all her accumulated pain: "Yolanda, my life, that plane has left me!"
The video description, signed by the author, serves as an epitaph for an entire generation: "To all those mothers who said goodbye to their children not knowing if they would see them again."
The clip accumulated over 45,200 views, 6,568 reactions, and 900 comments in just a few hours, becoming another episode of the collective catharsis that the Cuban diaspora has been experiencing on TikTok for years with heart-wrenching farewells at Cuban airports.
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