The Cuban comedian and actor Ulises Toirac published a reflection titled "The Shock of Emigrating" on his Facebook profile this Sunday, in which he starkly describes the pain caused by emigration in Cuba, resonating with thousands of followers who see their own stories or those of their families reflected in his words.
Toirac used a powerful image to define what it means to leave: "Emigrating is a blow that leaves a mark, like a tattoo. It hurts the day it's done, and it stays forever."
The text distinguishes two dimensions of migratory tearing. The first, the more intimate one: "the family, the home (which in Cuba often remains the same throughout life and ultimately becomes a place where every corner has a story)." The second, broader dimension: "the neighborhood, the city, the country, friends, schools." It concludes that, in either case, "leaving hurts even if the future is promising."
One of the wounds that Toirac identifies as the most irreparable is the definitive break with loved ones: “There are cases where you know you will never see certain people again. And that hurts a lot.” But the pain becomes even sharper, he warns, when emigrating is not a free choice but the only possible escape: “When you have no alternatives but to emigrate, you are also overwhelmed by disappointment, frustration, and anger [...] And the pain takes on more bitter and profound flavors.”
At the end of the post, Toirac explicitly clarified that he is not emigrating: "No. I'm not emigrating. I'm visualizing all the stories that have been told... and those yet to come. And it hurts how filled we are with that crap."
The reflection arrives just four days after Toirac participated in the podcast "Todos Hablan," from Cubamastv, alongside actor Jorge Martínez, where he described Cuban emigration after 1959 as "the worst demographic disaster in the entire history of Cuba" due to the irreversible family separations it causes. In that same conversation, the comedian stated that he did not want to "get used to a country of the sixth world" and that he refused to let "existence be a sum of negativities."
This Sunday's post is set against a backdrop of sustained criticism from Toirac towards the Cuban regime on his social media profile throughout the year. On Tuesday, he published a post stating: "Do you want less dissent? Invest in electricity, water, and gas... not police." In July, he described the electrical collapse with the phrase "it's no longer the light at the end of the tunnel; it's that there is no tunnel."
The background that lends weight to each of these words is an unprecedented demographic crisis. According to data from the National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI), Cuba recorded a negative migration balance of 245,264 people in 2025, resulting from 317,320 emigrations compared to 72,056 immigrations. The country’s effective population decreased from 9,748,007 inhabitants at the end of 2024 to 9,434,593 by the end of 2025, a reduction of 313,414 people in just one year.
Since 2020, Cuba has lost over 1.6 million inhabitants, as a result of the migratory exodus and the decline in natural growth. Emigration particularly affects the younger generations: according to researcher Arelis Rosalen Mora Pérez from the Center for Demographic Studies (CEDEM) at the University of Havana, 50% of those who had emigrated by the end of 2024 were under 35 years old.
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