A video from CubaNet Noticias and Martí Noticias that travels through the streets of Cuba asking elderly people how they imagined their old age and how they experience it today, captures responses that are shocking: hunger, abandonment, pensions that are insufficient for anything and the certainty that the best thing their children can do is leave the country.
"I always thought that my old age would be as peaceful as possible. And now I am about to turn 82 in October. It has been a disaster," says a woman. Her pension amounts to 3,000 pesos a month, which is not enough to afford the jar of yogurt she consumes every morning.
"I live on the street selling bags and coffee just to have a plate of food, and even that is scarce," he emphasizes.
Another elderly man, who identifies himself as a former mechanical engineer from a Cuban company, recalls that he and his wife—who used to work in banking—could cover all their needs with their salaries. Today, he earns 3,210 pesos a month. "It simply isn't enough for anything," he summarizes.
A man details the gradual dismantling of the basic staples. "They took away our chicken, they took away our ground beef, they took away our soap, they took away our salt, they took away our sugar, they took away our coffee, they took away our cigarettes," he enumerated. "All of us old folks are dying of hunger," he states.
The difficulties are not limited to food. An elderly man describes the lines to collect his pension as "kilometric" and points out that he also cannot find the medications he needs to treat his ailments.
Emigration serves as a backdrop in many testimonies. Several interviewees mention that their children have been living outside Cuba for years. When asked if they would want them to return to try for a change, the response is unanimous: no.
"The best thing a person can do here in this country is to leave, because there is no future for anyone here," says one of them.
When asked to define in one sentence what it is like to age in Cuba, the responses encapsulate decades of unfulfilled promises: “This is dying,” “Aging in Cuba is sad,” “It’s very tough,” “It comes down to a substantial change in our situation,” and “Aging is like sunset. The evening fades away, and in the same way, people fade away. The whole world knows this. The problem is that many close their eyes to avoid seeing the reality.”
The data supports the claims made by the interviewed seniors. According to a survey conducted by the Independent Trade Union Association of Cuba involving 506 retirees across five provinces, 99% stated that their pension does not cover basic needs for food, housing, and medication; 90.7% continued working after retirement, and 99.4% felt that the amount received was unfair in relation to the years worked.
The official minimum pension has been set at 4,000 pesos since September 2025, equivalent to less than 10 dollars at the informal exchange rate, and covers only a fraction of the basic food basket, estimated between 12,000 and 30,000 pesos per person.
The economist Javier Pérez Capdevila estimated that a person needs around 96,060 pesos per month to cover basic needs, of which 70,070 pesos would be allocated solely for food.
This drama unfolds in the oldest country in Latin America and the Caribbean: by the end of 2024, 25.7% of the Cuban population—over 2.5 million people—was aged 60 or older, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information. This percentage increased by 6.3 points over a decade, driven by low birth rates, the massive emigration of young people, and a decline in the total population.
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