Gricel Michelena wakes up every morning not knowing what she will put on the table. A mother of five children in Cienfuegos, without a stable job and facing four consecutive days without electricity at the time of the report, her testimony —collected this Tuesday by CubaNet in a report on poverty in Cuba— captures with a starkness that is hard to ignore the daily reality of thousands of Cuban families.
Gricel’s day begins around six in the morning by lighting charcoal to heat water, as the electricity has been absent for days.
"I always get up at six or six-thirty to light the charcoal and heat the water for them. When I have the chance to give them a little glass of milk, I get up to prepare it and buy their bread," she said.
The nights are just as exhausting: without electricity, the heat and mosquitoes prevent the children from getting any rest.
"They don't sleep well during the blackout. The mosquitoes keep them awake. Sometimes my hands get tired from swatting them away. I can even fall asleep because it's a lie that a person can stay awake all night," she lamented.
To earn some money, Gricel takes on temporary jobs: cleaning a house for 500 Cuban pesos.
"I'll go, clean it up, and buy them some bread or a little pack of soda. If I have a bit of oil, I'll prepare the bread with oil and they'll take it to school," she explained.
When there is no work, he turns to neighbors and friends. Some lend him help; others, aware of his situation, give him what they can.
"I spent the whole day like this, trying to find what to feed them. A neighbor came and gave me a small can of rice; another gave me a little bit of beans," he recounted.
School transportation is a luxury that the family cannot afford. Spending 500 pesos on a vehicle means being unable to buy even a pound of rice, so Gricel walks long distances, carrying the youngest child, to drop each kid off at their school. One of them attends a special school where punctuality is required.
“If I manage to get 500 pesos and spend it on transportation to send them to school, then I won’t have any money left to even buy a pound of rice. That’s why I always take them back and forth myself,” she stated.
The State provides a monthly allowance of Social Assistance of 5,519 pesos, an amount that, in Cuba of September 2026, is almost symbolic. A bottle of oil in the informal market costs around 5,000 pesos or more, which means that with all the state aid, it would barely cover for that one product.
"If you buy the bottle of oil, you can't buy anything else," Gricel summarized with a precision that needs no embellishments.
This reality is not exclusive to your home.
According to the study "En Cuba Hay Hambre 2025," presented by Food Monitor Program in May 2026, 96.91% of the Cuban population lacks adequate access to food, and 33.9% of households had at least one member who went to bed hungry in the month prior to the survey.
Cienfuegos is among the five provinces with critical levels of food insecurity identified by that same organization.
In August, the province experienced power outages lasting between 11 and 16 hours daily, with instances of up to 50 consecutive hours without electricity, which triggered protests in front of the provincial government headquarters on the 22nd of that month.
The home where the family lives also worries Gricel: the property is deteriorating, and she fears it might collapse while they sleep.
"I feel very cornered because I see the situation I'm in, that I'm not making any progress. I have my kids in this house, and I'm afraid that one day, while we're sleeping, it might collapse on us," she confessed.
It is her own children, despite their young age, who try to support her when they see her crying.
"The only thing they tell me is, 'Mom, don’t cry. We’re going to get through this. If there are people poorer than us who have managed to get out, why can’t we?'"
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