A Cuban woman living in Italy shared a 58-second video on TikTok on Tuesday, capturing the moment she returns to her neighborhood in Cuba and reunites with her son and mother, in a scene that moved everyone who saw it.
The account @lyenlavin8, whose profile name “liliCUIT” combines her name with the abbreviations for Cuba and Italy, posted the clip with the description "This was my return to Cuba."
In the images, the woman is seen arriving in a car at her neighborhood, where a child—presumably her son—and a woman, who appears to be her mother, are waiting for her.
The three of them, in tears, come together in an embrace in front of the family home, right in the street, while in the background the song plays: "Cuba Isla Bella."
The reunion summarizes in less than a minute the weight of distance and the joy of returning, two emotions that millions of Cuban families separated by emigration know all too well.
This type of video is part of a viral trend that has gained traction on TikTok and remains very active in 2026: emigrated Cubans returning to the island—often without warning—and documenting the moment they reunite with their loved ones.
In cases shared on social media, reunions have resulted in scenes ranging from screams and cries to fainting from emotion. In the days leading up to the release of this video, other similar cases touched the audience, such as a mother who heard her son arrive after years of absence and the case of a Cuban woman who reunited with her children almost four years later.
An earlier case very similar to that of @lyenlavin8 was that of another Cuban resident in Italy who returned without notice, and whose video garnered over 151,800 views in two days, with the mother exclaiming, "Oh my God, my girlfriend!" upon seeing her daughter appear.
The Cuban community in Italy has experienced steady growth in recent years: at the beginning of 2025, there were 26,476 residents with Cuban citizenship in the country, up from 24,756 in 2024 and 23,531 in 2023, according to ISTAT data compiled by TuttiItalia. Almost seven out of ten members of this community are women: 18,175 of the 26,476 registered at the beginning of 2025. The highest concentration is found in Lombardy, followed by Lazio, Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont, Veneto, Tuscany, and Campania.
Behind each of these videos lies a story of separation that reflects the massive exodus occurring in Cuba: more than a million people have left the island since 2021, according to official figures, turning family distance into a daily reality for hundreds of thousands of Cuban households.
The video by @lyenlavin8, on the other hand, is just one more of those moments that the Cuban diaspora continues to document with their phones in hand, as a way to share with the world the excitement of returning home.
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