Cuban authorities are threatening fines to mothers from Guamuta, a locality in the municipality of Santiago de Cuba near the Sanctuary of the Cobre, for not sending their children to school, according to a complaint published by opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer.
The reason put forth by the families is compelling: children leave home without eating, and in the schools themselves, they also do not receive sufficient nourishment.
The activist and leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), documented and denounced the situation in a Facebook video where he gathered several affected mothers.
"They are threatening mothers with fines if they do not send their children to school. This is happening in Guamuta, in El Cobre, Santiago de Cuba, but it is also occurring in many other places across the country," he warned in the recording.
In the video, a woman claims that she didn't send her son to preschool because he didn't eat the day before and there wasn't even a piece of bread at home. "If I have nothing... there's no bread... tomorrow you're not going, and I won't tell the teacher, you can't tell me at my house... if you want me to go, bring me, give me food."
Another woman said that the bread from the store had arrived black and that she was sure it was messing up her child's stomach with that food. "I'm sure I'm causing him an ulcer with that bread," she summarized.
"Everyone is falling silent. We are falling into the same vicious cycle. Fear is overcoming us, and we are letting them do whatever they want with us," said a person present at the meeting.
The complaint comes amidst a nationwide educational and food crisis that has worsened with the start of the 2026-2027 school year. The World Food Program estimated that 48.5% of Cuban children aged six to eleven do not receive food or snacks at school, and ensuring just breakfast and a snack for one child can exceed 10,000 Cuban pesos per month.
The Minister of Education, Naima Trujillo, acknowledged in October that about 11,000 students were not attending classes regularly in the current school year, without mentioning hunger among the causes. The school system also faces a deficit of approximately 24,000 teachers and started the school year without drinking water or stable electricity in many schools.
In light of this institutional abandonment, local activist Yoel Alejandro Pérez Serrano is leading the "Save Cuba" campaign in Guamuta, with support from UNPACU and the Assembly of Resistance, ensuring that at least one meal from Monday to Friday is provided to the elderly, the sick, children, and mothers without resources to feed their families.
As of now, there is no verifiable official national provision that imposes fines on parents for school absenteeism; the documented threats appear to be responses from local authorities. However, the pattern repeats across different provinces, indicating a systematic pressure from the regime to maintain attendance figures while ignoring the real cause of absences: hunger.
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