An elderly blind man who lives completely alone in San Rafael, a rural locality in the municipality of Holguín, survives in extreme poverty: he sleeps on a board with cardboard as a mattress, uses a bucket as a toilet, and cooks on improvised stoves with exposed bare wires.
The man's name is Juan Ridel Domínguez Martínez and he performs all his household tasks by touch, as he is completely blind.
His story was documented by the social activist Noly Blak in a video published on Facebook that has garnered over 32,000 views.
When Blak arrived at the old man's house, he had only a bit of rice and a flour broth he hadn't been able to cook due to a power outage. "I started making a little rice this morning and the power went out, just a little flour that I have there and that's it," he recounted.
The house gets completely wet when it rains. The electrical wires are bare and exposed, although the elderly man claims he hasn’t been electrocuted because he knows where not to touch. He doesn’t even remember his age for sure: "I don't remember anymore, my son," he replied when asked.
The man receives a pension of about 3,000 pesos a month as a person with a disability. However, to travel to the town to collect it, he has to pay 2,000 pesos for a tricycle, the only transportation available in the area. He is left with only 1,000 pesos to feed himself and cover all his needs for the month. "My people are left with just a thousand pesos," Blak noted in the video.
On one occasion, when Juan Ridel reached the bank window after waiting in line, the money had run out, and he had to wait at another counter. "Oh, my God, how am I going to pay the 2,000 pesos and how am I going to buy something to eat?" he recalled with anguish.
The gentleman has no children and has lost his entire family: first his father, then his mother—who passed away from cancer—and finally his brother, about whom he said: “He was my life.”
For those who wish to help Juan Ridel, Noly Blak published the account number CUP 9238 1299 7534 1985 and her WhatsApp contact (+5353082732) to facilitate donations. "It’s a shame that our grandparents have become zombies of their own money," concluded the activist.
Noly Blak, whose real name is Norge Ernesto Díaz Blak, has been documenting and managing humanitarian aid for people living in extreme poverty in Holguín for years. In April, one of his campaigns raised over 3.6 million pesos for a mother with three children, and in May another initiative of his gathered over 1.1 million pesos for two siblings living in extreme poverty.
The case of Juan Ridel reflects a humanitarian crisis that particularly impacts the elderly. The loss of purchasing power of pensions, the scarcity of food and medicine, and the massive emigration of relatives have worsened the living conditions of hundreds of thousands of elderly people in Cuba.
According to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, 79% of those over 70 years old are unable to have three meals a day, in a context marked by the deterioration of basic services, prolonged blackouts, and the collapse of essential infrastructure.
Although the government raised the minimum pension to 4,000 pesos in September, this increase has not compensated for the purchasing power in the face of the sustained rise in prices in the informal market and widespread inflation. Thousands of seniors are facing a harsh reality with insufficient pensions and a damaged social security system that leaves entire families without institutional support.
The regime itself admitted in March that the budget "is not extensive" and does not allow for the care of all vulnerable individuals.
In light of the collapse, he announced in June that he will require private and state companies to fund the social assistance system, implicitly acknowledging that the State can no longer sustain it.
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