A Cuban living in Brazil took her mother shopping at a local market and recorded her reaction, which became an emotional portrait of the contrast between Brazilian abundance and the scarcity experienced on the island.
The video posted by Meysel Pereira on Facebook gathered over 51,000 views and nearly 2,700 reactions in just a few days.
While Meysel was picking out meat for the cart, her mother disappeared among the aisles, completely absorbed in looking at the products. "I was thinking: where has this woman gone?" said the video’s creator.
The scene that followed says it all: the mother walked through the shelves, astonished by the pork chops, peppers, pumpkins, and fruits, unable to believe what was before her. "Daughter, this is an eye-opener here, look at this, look at this," she exclaimed at one point in the video.
The excitement reached its peak when the woman picked up some apples and shared a phrase that encapsulates the feelings of millions of Cubans: "Look, here I am fulfilling my dream, picking apples, everything. And this is the best."
In the video, the mother mentions that rice in Cuba cost her "300 and something pesos" per pound when she left, a fact that aligns with the current reality of the island, where this product ranges from 220 to more than 400 Cuban pesos per pound in the informal market.
A pound of chicken reaches 800 pesos, oil exceeds 3,600 pesos per liter, and eggs cost 150 pesos each.
The scene ended with the overflowing cart. "She wanted to leave the market with a full cart," Meysel shared at the end of the video.
"For her, everything was new. Coming from Cuba and encountering such a variety of foods and so many things together in a market left her amazed," the author wrote in the description of the post.
This type of reaction has become a recurring phenomenon among Cuban émigrés. In August 2026, Cuban singer Mary Martínez was brought to tears upon entering a supermarket in Brazil for the first time, because "in one place, there are all the things that practically do not exist in Cuba."
In July of that same year, another Cuban took her parents to the supermarket with an equally viral reaction of astonishment.
Independent studies estimate that 96.91% of the population lacks adequate access to food, and that meeting basic needs requires around 96,000 pesos per month, a figure well above the official average salary.
According to data from 2026, 33.9% of Cuban households reported that at least one member went to bed hungry in the past month.
The inflation in food and non-alcoholic beverages reached 36% year-on-year in August 2026, and projections indicate that overall inflation could be around 25% by the end of the year.
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