A young Cuban nurse identified as Aimée Trimiño Nuviola shared a heartbreaking testimony in the Facebook group "Madres Cubanas Luchadoras 2", in which she narrates how, despite both being active health professionals, she and her husband, a doctor, are unable to feed their 14-month-old baby.
"I am a young nurse married to a doctor; we have a 14-month-old baby, and it is inconceivable that two healthcare professionals cannot properly feed a baby," wrote Trimiño Nuviola in her first post in the group.
The nurse describes how, after her husband received his monthly salary, she went out onto the streets for two consecutive days with her child in her arms, trying to buy food through a bank transfer, but was unable to do so.
"I spent two consecutive days almost begging people to sell me some food to feed my child because I had nothing to give him, and everyone refused. On the last day, I left each place in tears," she recounted.
At the end of that fruitless search, she returned home without having achieved anything: "With my baby in my arms, I came back home frustrated, hurt, powerless, and above all, with empty hands."
The food shortage in Cuba is compounded by the banking cash crisis, which hits state sector workers particularly hard.
Trimiño Nuviola reports that the banking system prioritizes payments to education employees and retirees, leaving healthcare workers without access to the money they need to survive: "The banks have no cash; they now only prioritize education workers and retirees. What about the others? When will we be able to get paid? While we wait, how do we feed our families?"
The nurse concluded her post with a question that encapsulates the despair of thousands of Cuban families: “What can I tell my child when he cries from hunger and his healthcare professional parents can’t buy him milk or food? WE CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE.”
This situation is not an isolated case. The authorities of Guantánamo admitted in July that banks lack sufficient cash to ensure the normal payment of salaries and pensions, and by August, 113 private businesses were already taking on the responsibility of paying pensions to retirees due to the banking system's inability to do so.
The salary background explains the magnitude of the problem. Resolution 17/2026 from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, effective from July 1 with actual payments starting in August, set the basic salary for a newly graduated doctor at 7,045 Cuban pesos per month - about 10.5 dollars at the informal exchange rate - and the salary for a basic nurse at 4,755 pesos.
The economist Javier Pérez Capdevila estimated that a person needs around 96,060 pesos per month to meet basic needs, of which 70,070 pesos would be allocated solely to food—a figure that multiplies several times any salary in the healthcare sector.
The regime itself acknowledged that the increase "is still insufficient to cover the basic basket of goods and services."
Other healthcare workers have reacted with similar indignation: a doctor described the salary increase as "a global shame", and another pointed out that the salary "barely covers the cost of a pack of chicken." In May, a specialist doctor left the profession because her salary was insufficient to feed her child.
The food crisis described by Trimiño Nuviola has systemic dimensions: the Food Monitor Program reported in 2026 that 96.91% of the Cuban population lacks adequate access to food, and UNICEF noted that one in ten Cuban children suffers from severe food insecurity.
The Minister of Food Industry, Alberto López Díaz, admitted in June that more than 100,000 children were not receiving their daily milk and that the child supply plan was "impossible to fulfill."
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