Maura Vázquez, 71 years old, arrived this week in Pinar del Río in her tireless search for her daughter Doraiky Águila Vázquez, who has been missing for more than 20 months.
The playwright and activist from Pinar, Irán Capote documented the meeting on his social media, describing the mother as a woman of extraordinary strength who, amidst tears, refuses to lose hope.
"I don't think I've ever met a stronger woman than her. At 71 years old, she is still searching for her daughter across the island," Capote wrote in his post, where he recounted that Maura confided to him that there is "a little flame burning inside her that doesn't allow her to lose hope."
The journey to the western province is based on a family lead: Doraiky's grandparents lived in Sandino, a municipality in Pinar del Río, and the family believes that in a possible state of disorientation, their daughter may have attempted to reach there. Maura has no certainties or concrete clues, only faith and a pain she holds back to avoid losing strength.
According to Capote, the mother asserts that she moves "in whatever way she can" and that, if she cannot find transportation, she would make the journey on foot. "Because she will not stop her search until she finds her daughter," the activist wrote.
"Let us not allow that little flame of hope to be extinguished. If faith can move mountains, a mother's love can move an entire country, an entire universe," he concluded.
Doraiky, 48 years old, disappeared on the night of March 15, 2025 during a widespread blackout that affected Havana.
She was last seen on Calzada de Diez de Octubre, wearing a long yellow dress with red flowers and black sandals with a red strap. She suffers from episodes of transient memory loss that make her particularly vulnerable to disorientation.
Since then, Maura has continued to travel across the island. She traveled to Sancti Spíritus in October following a lead that placed Doraiky in Cabaiguán, but with no results. Previously, she had made a pilgrimage to the National Sanctuary of San Lázaro in El Rincón with a photograph of her daughter, and in April 2026, she went personally to El Vedado to dispel a rumor that had her located in that Havana neighborhood.
In June 2025, exhausted by institutional inaction, Maura publicly held the Cuban regime responsible for the lack of an official response. The family filed a police report with registration number 19434 and never received effective assistance from the State.
In the post, Capote also spoke about Doraiky's children, who are waiting to turn eighteen so they can go out and look for their mother themselves. One of them will turn fifteen next year, a date that Doraiky always dreamed of celebrating with her family.
The activist warned that Doraiky "could be anywhere, changed, transformed, kidnapped, confused, disassociated," and urged all of Cuba to keep sharing her image and that of her mother on social media.
The family is offering a reward of 350,000 Cuban pesos for reliable information regarding the whereabouts of Doraiky. Any leads can be reported to the numbers 50255751 and 54011152.
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