Cubans Between Memory and Forgetting
Photo Feature by Fabiana del Valle
HAVANA TIMES – He slowly opens his eyes. More than a routine, waking up each morning has become a challenge. He tries to recognize the room he’s waking up in, but he can’t, he only senses the echo of a life that is fading from his mind. He is surrounded by faces he can no longer identify, a family that has become unfamiliar in recent times. This is how the days begin for a 91-year-old man.
His life is marked by the routine of forgetting and the fragility of the body. The walls become allies, like crutches he never lets go of as he moves through the house. Frustration overwhelms him: his hands tremble, his sight no longer serves him, and his steps drag like shadows from the past.
Every gesture he makes carries a story behind it, a story often lost in the cracks of a system that doesn’t provide the care these men and women deserve. Old age in Cuba is lived in a context where tired memory and body face an unforgiving economic and social reality.
In 2023, according to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), over 22% of the Cuban population was over 60 years old, making Cuba one of the most aged countries in Latin America.
Many parents, grandparents, neighbors, retired professionals, and workers live today in households with meager resources. The burden of care falls entirely on the family, which also faces its own battles: insufficient salaries, limited access to medicine, inflation that robs even the soul, and uncertainty that has become daily bread.
Retirement pensions are symbolic when compared to the high cost of living. Most retired elderly people survive on figures that barely reach 1500 CUP per month—roughly 5 USD at the informal exchange rate. To make it clearer, this is a country where a liter of cooking oil can cost between 900 and 1500 pesos, where inflation is speeding out of control with no brakes.
Not long ago, I saw an old man in front of a kiosk selling individual pizzas, sodas, and sweets. He pulled some bills from the pocket of his shirt and counted them again and again, as if counting could make them grow in number. He asked the clerk about prices, murmured something to himself, and put the money away. He left without buying anything, resigned and hopeless.
For many in this country, daily life is a battle for survival—not only physical and emotional, but economic. It’s true that some receive help from abroad, but those who aren’t so lucky depend on the goodwill of their loved ones or the State’s pitiful social protection.
Sons and grandsons become caregivers, often navigating between love and exhaustion, tenderness and the anger of not being able to offer more—of the helplessness that comes with living on an island where it doesn’t matter how hard you try if the result is always the same.
Our elders supported this country with their work, sacrifice, and faith in the future. Their situation calls for institutional solutions, social sensitivity, civic awareness, and commitment.
They deserve more than symbolic pensions, insufficient medicine, or improvised homes—they deserve respect, presence and companionship. In the end, we will all reach that day, waking each morning in an unfamiliar bed, searching the walls for the balance that life has slowly taken away.
It’s terrible what’s going on in Cuba the US placed these sanctions on Cuba to stop the Cuban government from gaining any financial profits but my opinion is that it’s hurting the Cuban people mo than it’s hurting the Cuban government I’m praying that God will put mercy in the hearts of the leaders of the free world that they can come together to start having talks with the Cuban government to find a solution to this inhumane problem I think animals get more attention and care than these poor people my heart pain with hidden tears to see the suffering of these people may God help us and have mercy on those who can do something about this and sit back and do nothing.
I have made many trips to the island. One thing I have done from one end of the island to the other is have an Abuela y Abuelo day. I would walk the neighborhoods and search out the elderly and handicapped. I know the gifts I gave are not solving a problem but to give these beautiful people just a moments relief.
The tragedy that is Cuba has caused enough suffering. I pray the ego’s will lay down and let humanity bring relief for Cuba now.
If only those elders would have gotten rid of the communists…..
If only the US would end the cruel, crippling embargo then daily life for Cubans of all ages would improve dramatically. Odd that you never seem to raise that obvious point in your reports.
It’s a sad state of affairs made worse by Trump and the Cuban government bickering and too much he said she said while the population suffers.
I see little respite happening in the next 4 years unless other countries step up assistance to Cuba and that includes vacationing there versus Mexico or DR .. Highly recommended if safety off resort.
Is an issue and it should be .. Cuba is much safer than the DR, other Caribbean destinations and Mexico.
We vacation in Cuba 2 or 3 times annually and we love it.
A very honest, heartfelt article. I remember taking to my mother’s cousin a few years before he passed. He said, “Sometimes I think it’s a long, long blurry movie.” He was referring to the Cuba(n) story.
I love Cuba and it’s people. The country is beautiful as are its wonderful and kind people. They deserve better from their government.!
I am moved by the sadness in this article. More so these days as my own idiot president Trump threatens to cut Social Security for seniors in the US. A century ago, the fears around growing old alone in the US were minimal because most people assumed that their adult children would be there if needed. In Cuba today, because of emigration, the hope is that your adult children abroad will pick up the slack. In the case of those elderly who don’t have family in the exterior or worse, if that family has “drank the Coca-Cola” meaning they have forgotten about those left in Cuba, the situation is very sad. Most of these desperate seniors who were teenagers in 1959 are now in there 80’s. Even those born shortly after the revolution are at retirement age. I can help but imagine how betrayed they must feel when they see someone like Fidel’s son Tony vacationing in an expensive European resort hotel, or Raul’s daughter remodeling her mansion in Havana or worse still, Fidel’s grandson throwing birthday parties in Miramar. Is that what a lifetime of sacrifice was for?