A Cuban resident in Miami recorded this week a cart full of fresh bread being discarded as waste—intended to feed animals—and contrasted it with the reality on the Island, where thousands of children have gone months without being able to eat bread in the mornings.
The video, published on Facebook by the account "Pesca en Miami", amassed over 238,000 views and sparked a wave of reactions among the Cuban community in exile.
“Hello, gentlemen, these are the things that break my heart. You see here, and in Cuba, there is no bread. Look at this, this is for the chickens, for the animals. All of this is what gets thrown away daily in this country,” says the author while showing the bread with his hand.
The contrast presented in the video is striking: an entire cart of fresh bread thrown away in the United States, while in Cuba, children do not have access to this basic food.
"A full cart of breads that I assure you are better than the bread from the bodega in Cuba," he claims. "And the children in Cuba haven't seen bread, you know how long it’s been. I’m sure that right now in Cuba there are plenty of children who can't have a little bread in the morning."
The shortage of bread on the Island is not just a perception: it is a documented and worsening crisis. In Villa Clara, the allocated bread has been restricted since February 2026 only to those under 13 and over 65 years old, due to a lack of flour, fuel, and electricity.
In Guantánamo, distribution is limited to children, hospitals, and prioritized social services. In several areas, the weight of subsidized bread has been reduced from 80 grams to just 40, and some families have gone more than three weeks without receiving it.
The Minister of Food Industry, Alberto López Díaz, acknowledged in June 2026 that the wheat mills were inactive or operating at minimal capacity, and that only one out of six wheat vessels contracted for that year had arrived in the country.
Cuba needs approximately 20,000 tons of wheat flour per month to produce regulated bread; in Ciego de Ávila, the province received only 32 tons at the end of May, enough for two days of distribution for more than 430,000 inhabitants.
The same official admitted that more than 100,000 children were not receiving their daily ration of milk.
A mother from Santiago de Cuba declared this Wednesday that four of her eight children are malnourished, that sometimes they go to bed without eating, and that she has gone two days without food to give them the little available food.
The Food Monitor Program estimated that 96.91% of the Cuban population did not have adequate access to food in April 2026, and the World Food Programme noted that 48.5% of schoolchildren aged six to eleven were not receiving meals or snacks at educational centers.
The video "Fishing in Miami" ends with a question that encapsulates the sentiment of an entire diaspora: "Holy and dear God, when will my Cuba be free?" In the background, "Patria y Vida" plays, the anthem of the Cuban protest movement that emerged after the demonstrations on July 11, 2021.
The food situation of Cuban children has only worsened: according to UNICEF, approximately 9% of children under five experienced severe food deprivation in November 2025, a figure that international organizations themselves warn could have deteriorated since then.
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