Rosa María Payá Acevedo, founder of Cuba Decide and coordinator of Pasos de Cambio, led a conference at Florida International University (FIU) where she presented concrete tools to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Cuba and plan for a democratic transition.
“We do not just come to denounce the collapse; we come to present tools to face it,” the activist made clear from the outset.
The event, titled «Social Collapse in Cuba» and jointly organized by Pasos de Cambio and FIU, brought together experts in humanitarian emergencies and representatives from Cuban civil society. Payá framed it as real planning for the "day after" the dictatorship, not as an academic exercise.
"Cuba is not merely experiencing an economic crisis. We are facing the collapse of a system that has destroyed the country's productive capacity, impoverished families below the extreme poverty line, and turned daily survival into a desperate struggle," he stated.
The first part of the meeting presented the IX Study on Social Rights in Cuba from the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), based on 1,318 interviews conducted between June 27 and July 29 in 79 municipalities across the 15 Cuban provinces.
The data is staggering: 94% of Cuban households live in extreme poverty, five points higher than the previous year. To avoid falling below that threshold, a family of three needs to earn more than 87,000 Cuban pesos per month, a figure that the vast majority cannot reach.
Hunger is advancing unchecked: eight out of ten Cubans have been forced to skip at least one meal due to lack of money or food; among older adults, the ratio rises to nine out of ten. “Last year it was seven out of ten. In other words, this year has seen a worsening of food conditions,” noted Yaxys Cires, director of Strategies at OCDH.
For the first time, blackouts have surpassed food shortages as the main problem identified by respondents. Disapproval of the regime's management has reached 95%, and only 6% believe that the 176 announced economic measures will bring any improvement.
The second block brought together specialists in humanitarian logistics. Teo Babún, president of Outreach Aid to the Americas —with over 30 years of experience distributing aid in Cuba through religious networks— warned that what is lacking on the island is not capacity, but funding, and proposed to leverage the more than 4,000 Catholic and evangelical churches as a decentralized distribution network.
The Reverend José Joaquín Espino, rector of the National Sanctuary Ermita de la Caridad, presented a specific obstacle: all aid currently arrives through Mariel, and transporting a package from there to Guantánamo costs more than sending it from Miami to Mariel due to the lack of independent transportation.
Andrés Asión, from Global Empowerment Mission, presented the organization's response to the earthquakes in Venezuela as an operational model: within 30 days, they provided food assistance to over 228,000 people, mobilizing 24 cargo planes and five military vessels.
Payá Acevedo was blunt in closing the event: «The regime is the only obstacle between that definitive aid and the Cubans».
The panel is framed within the context of the Liberation Agreement, signed in March 2026 by Pasos de Cambio and the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, which proposes a four-stage transition —liberation, stabilization, reconstruction, and democratization— and includes a specific technical commission for Humanitarian Emergency.
«We are preparing for the day after, to stop being a failed state», Payá wrote on his X account the following day. «The only way out of the crisis is to leave the dictatorship».
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