Images shared this Sunday on Facebook show what an anonymous source described as the "soup" served to elderly and social cases in the cafeteria of the Family Care System (SAF) located in what used to be the Cremería del Paseo de Martí, in Santiago de Cuba: a dark and murky liquid in a green bucket, with no visible substance.
The citizen journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada published the report along with the photographs, attributing the description to the person who sent him the images: "a broth of cilantro and chopped leeks; they say it's soup."
Leek and culantro are aromatic herbs commonly used in Cuban cuisine to enhance the flavor of broths. Their mention in the complaint underscores that the liquid served was essentially flavored water, with no real nutritional value.
The report is not an isolated incident. In May of this year, a state-sponsored article about the SAF included the testimony of a beneficiary from another dining facility on Martí Avenue, also in Santiago, who pointed out the poor quality of the food and warned that some elderly people ended up searching for food in churches or with humanitarian individuals.
Months later, in June, another report acknowledged insufficient rations and supply issues in establishments where the food received may constitute the only daily intake for many elderly individuals.
The pattern is repeated in other provinces. In Holguín, in August 2025, only four of the 9.2 tons of peas assigned to the SAF arrived, which at times forced them to serve only white rice. In Havana, a dining hall serving 84 elderly adults relied on donations from the World Food Programme and support from a private company to sustain itself.
The context of vulnerability for Cuban seniors exacerbates the situation. The minimum pension has remained at 4,000 Cuban pesos per month since September of last year, amounting to less than 10 dollars in the informal market, compared to a basic basket estimated at between 12,000 and 30,000 pesos.
Due to the state's inability to sustain the system, the regime opened the management of the SAF dining rooms to non-state actors through a public tender in August, as authorized by Agreement 10418 of the Council of Ministers and Resolution 14/2026 from the Ministry of Domestic Trade. The regulation requires two meals a day, food safety, and delivery service for those who cannot travel, but the gap between what is mandated on paper and what actually reaches the plate is evident.
In Santiago de Cuba, this gap was also filled for a time by the opposition organization UNPACU, led by José Daniel Ferrer, whose headquarters in Altamira managed to distribute up to 330 meals daily to vulnerable individuals in 2025, until the authorities began to harass the beneficiaries who came to the site.
Mayeta Labrada demanded a public response from the responsible institutions: "Commerce, Labor and Social Security, and the authorities of Santiago de Cuba should respond."
His conclusion summarizes the human aspect of the complaint: "The problem is how far the precariousness of a system that claims to protect its elderly has gone, while some end up looking at the bottom of a pot searching for food that is hardly there."
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