An elderly woman shouted down the boulevard of San Rafael, one of the busiest pedestrian streets in downtown Havana, asking for help to get something to eat.
The scene was captured in a 15-second video and posted on Facebook by Vladimir Turró Páez, an independent journalist from CubaNet, who tried to interview the woman to share her story, but she declined.
"How sad is the reality of Cubans; this woman walks shouting along the San Rafael boulevard asking for help to be able to eat. I wanted to interview her to share her story, but she did not agree," wrote Turró Páez when posting the recording.
In the brief clip, only the woman's voice can be heard: "To be able to eat, help."
San Rafael Boulevard is a pedestrian street of about five blocks in Centro Habana, located between Paseo del Prado and Avenida de Italia, featuring shops, cafés, and restaurants. The sight of an elderly woman walking through this public space shouting for food highlights the visible extent of the humanitarian crisis in the Cuban capital.
The case is not isolated. In recent weeks, similar situations have been documented: a grandmother from Havana was searching for discarded sweet potatoes in the street because she couldn't afford 130 pesos per pound in the informal market; a 92-year-old woman was asking for coins to pay for lunch at a soup kitchen; an elderly man lay in a doorway for five days in the Mantilla neighborhood, surviving thanks to neighbors and churches; and a 91-year-old man was recorded begging in Santiago de Cuba.
The data supports what the images show. According to a report from Food Monitor Program and Cuido60 released this month, more than 54% of older adults reported not having received their pension in the past six months, and 79% of those over 70 years old cannot have three meals a day.
99% of surveyed retirees stated that their pension does not simultaneously cover food, housing, and medications.
The minimum pension in Cuba ranges from 3,000 to 4,000 Cuban pesos per month, equivalent to between four and ten dollars in the informal market, while the basic food basket is estimated at between 12,000 and 30,000 pesos per person per month.
The regime itself acknowledged at the end of August that 883,446 people were in a vulnerable situation, nearly 7,000 more than in April. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero announced a monthly allocation for this group consisting of five pounds of rice, one pound of sugar, and one pound of beans, an amount that independent organizations consider manifestly insufficient.
To this situation is added the collapse of the supply booklet: visits conducted by the AFP agency in Havana discovered closed, empty warehouses or those converted into neighborhood markets, with residents no longer able to purchase products through the subsidized system.
Cuba has the most aging population in Latin America: 25.7% of its residents are over 60 years old, and 83.6% of that group relies on a pension that has lost almost all of its purchasing power after decades of economic management by the regime.
In September 2025, El País documented the case of a 70-year-old woman who was begging for money alongside her granddaughter on that same boulevard in San Rafael to buy "even a little bit of rice and black beans," needing about 100 dollars a month for a dignified diet, which is equivalent to around 20 minimum wages or two years' worth of accumulated pensions.
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