Less than a week before the start of the 2026-2027 school year, scheduled for September 1, Facebook groups like "Cuban Fighting Mothers 2" have become spaces for calls to solidarity from families who need uniforms, backpacks, shoes, and snacks that the State cannot guarantee.
The Minister of Education, Naima Ariatne Trujillo Barreto, publicly acknowledged that only 20% of the national enrollment will receive new uniforms at the start of classes.
Textile production reached between 2.2 and 2.3 million garments against a national demand of 3.6 million, according to official statements reported by the state-run Granma. Authorities, for their part, acknowledged that only about 20% of the enrollment will receive new uniforms, meaning that eight out of every ten Cuban students will start the school year without new school attire.
The scarcity is not uniform across the country: in Ciego de Ávila, the authorities prioritized the distribution only for preschool, fifth, and seventh grades, leaving out the rest of the years. In Holguín, only 53% of the uniforms for early grades was secured as of August 22.
One of the recently reported cases is that of Claudia Leidys, a mother from the Havana neighborhood of Alamar, who, according to a report by Cuba Bajo Lupa, stood in line for six hours—from 7:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.—only to receive an oversized garment for her fifth-grade son. She was unable to obtain the uniform for her younger son because his name did not appear on the administrative lists.
The issue of improper sizes is not new either. During the 2025-2026 school year, industry executives had already acknowledged complaints about the insufficient availability of small sizes in the country. In Matanzas, mothers reported oversized uniforms for primary school children that rendered the garments useless.
In light of the magnitude of the deficit, the regime allowed students to attend classes without uniforms and adjusted the schedules according to the conditions of each school, measures that families consider insufficient.
The discomfort on social media goes beyond clothing. Several mothers warned on Facebook that they will not send their children to classes if minimum conditions for electricity, food, and rest are not guaranteed, in a context of prolonged blackouts, food shortages, and widespread deterioration of school infrastructure.
The phrase that circulated on social media as a summary of the collective sentiment says it all: "Lots of will, few conditions."
The uniform deficit recurs year after year. For the 2025-2026 school year, many students attended with hand-me-down uniforms and shared notebooks between subjects, a situation that threatens to repeat itself this September as the State fails to meet even half of the actual demand.
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