A Cuban identified as Gloria María Sánchez recorded a video from her humble home under construction in Havana and posted it on Facebook, where it garnered nearly 39,000 views. In her testimony, recorded after spending the night without electricity, the woman boldly denounces the hunger, misery, censorship, and corruption that the Cuban people endure.
"Since yesterday at six in the evening until now, no electricity. That makes you think about many things," Sánchez begins in the video, sitting in her home as she reflects aloud on the reality of the island.
Using a medical metaphor, describe Cuba as an ill body: "I believe my Cuba is a lesion with an increasing amount of dead tissue. Dead tissue from hunger, from misery, from censorship, from corruption, from a painful exodus, from prisons filled with young people." And adds: "A skilled surgeon is needed to cut away all that dead tissue," before warning: "Because if not, we ourselves will have to amputate."
The woman firmly rejects the official discourse calling for resistance and waiting for better times: "Next year, everyone will be dead from hunger. Dead, all, all, all."
One of the main targets of her denunciation is the state-run stores, the rationing system that the regime presents as a social pillar. "The store in my neighborhood, a form of exploitation. Vampire stores that extract the little money that ends up in, I don’t know whose pocket," she asserts.
Despite the repressive environment, citizen testimonies continue to circulate on platforms like Facebook. Blackouts have served as a catalyst for protests: the Cuban Conflict Observatory recorded 107 street demonstrations in June 2026 alone, a historic high, with slogans of "Freedom" and "Down with the dictatorship" in various provinces. The account of a mother from Santiago de Cuba with eight children, several of whom are malnourished, published this Wednesday, illustrates that Sánchez's plight is not an isolated case.
Sánchez concludes his video with a question that captures the exhaustion of millions: "How long are we going to be sitting here like I am, like I woke up here, thinking and thinking and thinking, wearing myself down and wearing myself down? How long? Freedom for Cuba."
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