Vicente Borrero has sunburned skin and wears a hole-ridden tuxedo, a dirty old cap and faded shorts. His eyes appear to always be looking away, always on the verge of tears.

Vicente looks like the last survivor from the village of Jicotea, in Santiago de Cuba, a post-war man who saw it all and lived it all. In his house, built with a zinc roof and plank walls, through which any torrential rain can penetrate, Vicente has been waiting for someone for a long time. The day that Yasser Sosa traveled more than 90 miles to find him, Vicente couldn’t believe it. He looked at the visitor and told him that he was probably just like all the others, who had passed by the village for years, promising to help him.

Vicente doesn’t know it yet, but, in a few days, he’ll have a new home. He will leave the space where he’s lived for 77 years and move to a cement house that’s not far away. It has a garden and a front porch.

Vicente doesn’t walk like other people. Due to a congenital defect, he’s learned to move nimbly, using the strength of his arms and feet to traverse rocky paths on a daily basis. A few days ago, someone saw him crawling through a local park and notified Guillermo Rodríguez, a 34-year-old journalist from Ciego de Ávila. For at least three years, Guillermo has been raising money from Cubans on and off the island to buy houses for the homeless. The country currently has a deficit of 862,000 properties, according to data from the National Statistics Office (ONEI). However, unofficial figures suggest that there are some 1.2 million homeless Cubans, while thousands more reside in overcrowded or almost-marginal conditions.

Rodríguez asked Sosa, his right-hand man in Santiago de Cuba, to locate Vicente immediately. After finding him, he turned to his Facebook followers and told them who Vicente was: a disabled, unmarried man with no children, who had been in a wheelchair for more than 10 years. Vicente’s parents — his only support system — died a long time ago. He lives on a monthly pension of 1,500 Cuban pesos (a little over $5) from the state, enough to eat just once every two days.

It took three days to raise 210,000 Cuban pesos ($583). Rodríguez subsequently allocated 180,000 pesos ($500) to purchase the house. With the rest of the funds, he’ll furnish it with appliances that Vicente has never had. Rodríguez did the same thing over a month ago for Benito, a single father living in the center of the island, in a house made of planks with a dirt floor, and his 10-month-old baby. With 1.6 million pesos (more than $4,400), the volunteers acquired a two-story home and everything the father needed to start over.

There are days when Rodríguez searches for medicine for a mother, who is frightened by her daughter’s scabies. Sometimes he tries to get a wheelchair for a sick person, or a rice cooker for a housewife. He and his team are the ones who show up with a bar of soap or a package of spaghetti to give away, or they offer to carry a donated mattress for an elderly man who has nowhere to sleep.

It’s a silent solidarity movement. “A chain of favors,” Rodríguez notes. “Yesterday, two people went to pick up donated nebulizers for their children with asthma: they arrived with medicines to give to someone else, in case they needed them. The number of vulnerable, abandoned people is numerous. In Cuba, a network of support and empathy has been created […] in a country so devastated, people cling to that. In Cuba, only neighbors can help each other out.”

For several years now, Cubans haven’t waited around for their government. The state has left them orphaned, deprived of everything. Some say they feel betrayed, as if the authorities have turned their backs on them. Those who receive remittances from abroad are freed from depending on the increasingly scarce rationed food that the government barely guarantees. Those who manage to get into business are navigating shortages of all kinds, in a country with a collapsed, dependent economy that ended 2024 with an inflation rate of 24.88%. Tourism is increasingly depressed due to the lack of travel, while the private sector is impeded from growing. Today, in Cuba, according to studies, around 89% of families live in extreme poverty. In many cases, activists or civil society organizations fill the gaps in the ever-increasing space left by the government. And, after stepping in, almost all of them end up targeted by the political police, or are forced to abandon their work.

“The help I give is a way of denouncing the system”

“I need Clonazepam for my daughter,” says a desperate mother, in a WhatsApp group named Manos a la Obra (“Let’s get to work”). Soon, someone offers to share theirs. Groups of this type are increasingly popping up on social media. In these online forums, Cubans often share, distribute and exchange medicines. On the island — as the government itself has acknowledged — more than 460 medications are in short supply in the state pharmacies. Some people, faced with the possibility of death due to lack of treatment or surgery, launch GoFundMe campaigns to request humanitarian visas, or financial donations to cover a patient’s transfer to a hospital beyond the island.

Art historian and activist Yamilka Lafita — who has helped launch some of the most visible campaigns in recent years — asserts that, without knowing how or since when, it’s Cuban civil society that has united to survive. “In Cuba today, there are no supplies, treatments, reagents… there aren’t even doctors to perform operations. And these campaigns are a way to denounce the public health system, which is just another cog in the wheel of this failed state,” Lafita laments. She has helped transport children with cancer or in need of transplants to hospitals in Spain or the United States, so that they can receive treatment and surgeries. “Some people tell me: ‘You’re putting Band-Aids on the dictatorship.’ But I’m not putting Band-Aids on it, because my help denounces the system. Every contribution you make — whether it’s getting a humanitarian visa, or donating two syringes — helps a Cuban survive in poverty.”

Some Cubans attest that this is the greatest crisis of all time, even worse than the so-called Special Period (1991-2000), which began following the collapse of the Soviet Union. They base their testimony on the lack of hope people have for immediate change, but mostly on what can be seen on the street: an emigration of almost two million Cubans in about three years; people dying without medical care; retirees whose pensions are insufficient; or people seen sleeping on the streets, something they say was unheard of in the 1990s. The Cuban authorities acknowledge some 3,690 people “displaying wandering behavior,” but this is believed to be an undercount. José Daniel Ferrer, a renowned political leader from the eastern part of the island, knows this firsthand. Since his release from prison at the beginning of the year (following negotiations between the Cuban government and the Vatican), he’s been feeding hundreds of people. Every day, they come to his house, looking for food. With aid that he receives from abroad, Ferrer and his family distribute more than a thousand hot meals each afternoon, handing them out to people who don’t receive state support. The difference, according to the opposition leader, is that Cuba, today, is a place where there’s food for those who have money.

“In the early 1990s, the situation was such that, even if you had money, you couldn’t get much. You couldn’t move from one place to another, because the roads were deserted and there were barely any vehicles moving,” he recalls. “Now, if you have money, you can’t go to bed without eating, because there are products in dollars — very expensive — and there are MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized private enterprises). But for those elderly people who live on a thousand-something pesos in retirement, the hunger is as terrible, even worse than what we suffered from during the Special Period. They depend on what arrives at the grocery store… and almost nothing ever arrives. So, some people are faring worse.”

In Cuba, there’s also talk of the “new rich.” This is in stark contrast to what the Cuban government denied for years: social classes in a country where everyone was supposedly “equal.” These are people who come and go from the island; they often run businesses. Many of them can be seen in the increasingly common luxury cars — such as Mercedes-Benzes, Audis, or Chevrolets — that roll through Havana’s streets. However, what nobody is spared from, what affects everyone across the board, are the blackouts, the almost-daily power outages across the country. This electricity crisis is due to the lack of maintenance at the aging thermoelectric plants, as well as the reduction in fuel arriving from allied nations, such as Venezuela.

This is something that Cubans have also tried to take control of: in the absence of a state to resolve the energy crisis that has worsened since last year, some in the diaspora send light generators, small solar panels, candles and flashlights from abroad. But the truth is that these, too, are running out. Life becomes dark for everyone, equally. In this case, it’s the Cuban government that has sought help from abroad. And, once again, it’s relying on Russia to finally pull the country out of its massive energy crisis. But that, according to economists, won’t be enough, so long as the government persists in its centralized economic model.

“Cubans have remained stuck in the Cold War view of trade relations. They believe that Russia, China and others should help them, because they’re confronting the United States and are an important player for the great powers,” says economist Ricardo Torres, a former researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the University of Havana and a professor at American University in Washington, D.C. “I’m not sure the Russians see it that way. Such support would be very important for Cuba, but [the Cuban government] has never been interested in doing what it needs to do with its economic model to become a more reliable counterpart.”

More than six decades after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, it seems clear that it won’t be Russia that saves the country, nor activists who will heal the sick and provide housing for all the homeless Cubans. According to the Cuban Constitution, the state is responsible for ensuring the well-being of the population. But people believe there’s one thing that the government — which has stopped taking charge of almost everything — does handle perfectly: control. It maintains a heavy level of repression, allocating all kinds of reinforcements to ensure this. In a country that’s unable to guarantee food, electricity, or medical care, more than 1,000 political prisoners are held in its jails.

“In Cuba, if a person suffers from a medical emergency, it’s likely that an ambulance will take hours to come, if it arrives at all,” activist Carolina Barrero sighs. “But, if that same person shouts ‘Down with Raúl Castro!’ in the street, police patrols and state security agents will appear within minutes to detain and interrogate them. This shows that the regime’s inability to provide basic services isn’t simply due to scarcity, but to a deliberate political will. Castroism has always been in the hands of an extractive elite, who are more interested in maintaining [Cuba’s] international facade than in the well-being of the people.”

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This is the third time Freddy Castiblanco has tried to save Terraza 7, his bar and social project that has brought together New York’s Latin American and Hispanic diasporas since 2002. It’s something in keeping with the city, but, paradoxically, strange and rare.

The mitigating factor is that now, in one of the most direct crises affecting the migrant population in the United States and New York, Castiblanco has been unable to do anything about the excessive rent increase, which will rise from $7,500 (the price he’s been paying since the end of the pandemic) to $12,000. “A business in this industry, bars and restaurants, should theoretically pay around 10% of its net sales. So I should be paying around $6,500 monthly, maximum. So, $7,500 is already beyond that limit,” he asserts. “What’s happening is that a huge effort has been made over so many years, and communities have been created that come to see the music… it’s an economic miracle for a struggling neighborhood, where purchasing power is low.”

In 2000, when the Colombian arrived in Queens, to the Jackson Heights-Elmhurst area, known as the most diverse in the world, he found that all the area’s immigrants were still in their own countries. Peruvians in Peru, Colombians in Colombia, Mexicans in Mexico, Ecuadorians in Ecuador… And no one crossed borders. Along that avenue, Latin America replicated itself as it knew how.

“And there was a lack of a space where appreciation for others was promoted. The goal with Terraza was to have a place of appreciation for this artistic and cultural diversity,” he says. His venue features groups and bands from Central and South America, the Caribbean, Spain, North Africa, and India. Cuban cumbia and rumba were the founding rhythms. Each performance was a review of the history and concerns that explained these sounds: how they emerged, where they came from, where they had gone, and how they were here now. “And so, I understood that migrants were the ones who built the musicalities of the Americas, of all of them,” Castiblanco concludes.

Then came the music of Morocco, Andalusia, New Orleans, and Veracruz. Afro-Peruvian and Afro-Brazilian sounds, candombe, tango. And in the midst of it all, and always among it all, there was jazz. “I invited cajon masters, marimba masters, and Cuban rumba masters to play and improvise jazz around their traditional instruments. The improvisational elements of jazz allowed for that playfulness. So there was a very flexible way to express those immigrant memories and somehow construct a musicality that was truly local and not limited to recreating tradition,” he explains.

The pandemic years were decisive for Terraza 7′s future. What affected the majority ended up benefiting them. They used the front of the bar for performances. There was music almost daily, never stopping. They had up to three concerts a day. “We had a wonderful explosion,” says the Colombian. “We had a different big band once a week, which was repeated every month: we had Pedro Giraudo’s, influenced by contemporary tango; Samuel Torres’ with Colombian influences; Emilio Soya’s, influenced by tango; and now Manuel Valera’s, with Cuban influences.”

And yet, that same fortune brought trouble. At the end of the pandemic, the owner of the establishment notified Castiblanco that he would raise his rent; the argument was that there were too many people outside. At the time, he intended to charge him $10,000, which he managed, through negotiation and advocacy, to lower to $7,500.

Everything was going well until March of last year, when the landlord notified him that he had to start paying $12,000 in rent and retroactive payments for the rent reduction he had given him at the end of the pandemic. His argument, again, was the outdoor space: it’s very large, and he wanted to get more money out of him. “Then he took me to court and charged me for everything,” Castiblanco says. Until December 2024, that “everything” totaled $150,000.

A cultural and political space

Terraza 7 isn’t just another bar on the verge of collapse due to rising New York rents. The point is that its closure would be another victory for the current political ecosystem, in which any celebration or enshrinement of otherness seeks to be extinguished.

Castiblanco’s work has been intentionally political. In New York, many know him as the owner of Terraza 7, but many more recognize him as a leader. A physician by profession, he has testified before the United States Congress, the Mayor’s Office, and the City Council — in all cases, always defending the rights of citizens and immigrants: ensuring access to decent wages and healthcare.

“Understanding the complexity of migration has been a responsibility. Right now, under attack from the Donald Trump administration, we are a flag that exposes and educates about the complexity of migration. And a home, a refuge, because many spaces are dissolving out of fear and everything that’s happening,” the Colombian asserts.

People like New York State Senator Jessica Ramos, renowned percussionist Bobby Sanabria, and activist leader Ana María Archila have joined the #saveterraza7 campaign, aiming to raise money to postpone the hearing dates for the eviction order against the venue. So far, Castiblanco has raised $17,000, which has been used to postpone the hearings. “The judge said it can’t be postponed any longer; the trial will be in April.”

The future of Terraza 7 doesn’t appear to lie on Gleane Street in Queens. Unlike previous campaigns, in which Castiblanco was able to negotiate to remain there, this time it seems that won’t happen. The best option for the project is to relocate to a new space.

“I see it as an opportunity,” he notes. “In fact, when the Ford Foundation supported me during the crisis we experienced in 2016, one of the conditions was that part of the funds be used to establish its own nonprofit. The mission, vision, and even the logo were designed from that time. It’s called Acoustic Memories, and it would be the foundation that would manage all the programming, the entire artistic essence of Terraza.”

But that takes time, money, and public support. The ultimate goal of the #saveterraza7 campaign is to attract customers to the upcoming events in that space, raise funds for the relocation, and develop a new location. Perhaps one where one of those old factories typical of the area used to be; one that can accommodate more than the 70 people that the current site can hold; one where it’s possible to dance, read poetry, hold workshops, allow for social and political gatherings… Bringing a lot of people together, which is what it’s all about.

“Terraza 7 is a place where culture is created, where experimentation is created, where there is an intimate interaction with the people who live in the community and those who visit us. And that interaction is what shapes art. The difference is that art is created here,” Castiblanco maintains. For the activist, it is essential to be able to have the restaurant and bar, to have that income, and not depend on donations. His goal is for Terraza 7 to be able to survive on its own.

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They dressed her in a white gown and placed a floral headband over her curly hair. Seven-year-old Daniela Patricia Ferrer Reyes entered the Immigration Court building in Dallas, Texas, as if entering a castle.

“My daughter looked like a princess,” says her mother, Liettys Rachel Reyes. “They praised her so much in court; they told her that’s what she was, a princess. And that’s how I see her.”

The family had left their home in the northern city of Amarillo around 5:00 a.m., just enough time to make the trip to the courthouse where the girl’s first immigration hearing would take place, her first encounter with the U.S. justice system since entering the country in 2022.

At 1:00 p.m. on March 31, Daniela took her seat on the wooden bench in front of the judge. Her mother was then called to sit next to her.

“The first thing the judge asked was for me to explain why the girl had entered the country through the border, why I had taken her out of Cuba,” recalls Reyes, 33.

Reyes, a political activist with the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), arrived in the United States when Daniela was just over a year old, in 2019. At the time, Reyes was the wife of José Daniel Ferrer, the most prominent opposition leader in eastern Cuba, who took care of the child while the mother regularized her immigration status in the United States.

As a dissident, Reyes paid the price for standing up to the Cuban regime: she was not only threatened and persecuted for her political beliefs or witnessed the repeated arrests and beatings of Ferrer and other UNPACU members, but she was also banned from leaving the island in 2018 when she was invited to Europe to speak about human rights violations under the then-government of Raúl Castro.

In response to this restriction, she went on a hunger strike along with other activists who were denied the right to leave the country. When she was finally able to travel — and after being warned that she would be imprisoned upon her return — Reyes never went back. She settled in Texas.

That was what she was trying to explain in detail before the Dallas immigration court, with the help of an interpreter and in front of a judge who, according to Reyes, kept interrupting her, searching for inconsistencies, double-checking dates to ensure they were exact.

“They barely let me speak; they interrupted me about six times,” she says. “If the judge was harsh, the translator was even harsher. She told me: ‘Ma’am, please speak more slowly. I don’t understand you. I need you to be concise and precise in what you’re saying.’ They came down hard on me. I can’t even explain how I felt when they started questioning me like that, back and forth, without letting me explain everything my daughter went through in Cuba.”

On the wooden bench, Daniela remained silent, her chin resting on her chest, her head bowed. That Monday, she had to miss school to attend court, a distant and cold place, where there were other children and parents, all nervous, on the verge of collapse. The girl listened attentively, fully aware of what the judge and Reyes were discussing.

At one point, she squeezed her mother’s hand and stared at her, fearful. Reyes told her to stay calm, that everything was fine. “I felt like she was screaming at me, ‘Mom, get me out of here.’ She squeezed my hand as if to ask me to take her away,” her mother says. “She knew what was being discussed, she knew they were talking about deportation, she thought they were going to take her out of the country.”

The judge turned to Reyes once again and asked, “The child remains in the United States illegally. Are you aware that have to choose a country to which she can be deported?”

Reyes didn’t hesitate to respond: “Excuse me, Your Honor, but I do not agree with my daughter being deported to any country, because she is a child,” she said.

Daniela has until November to gather evidence, present a case for political asylum, and return to court with a lawyer to represent her, according to the judge’s order. Her mother has been seeking help to find one — someone who can guide them when Daniela must once again face the justice system.

“My daughter is only seven years old; she can’t defend herself in an asylum case in court,” Reyes insists.

According to the American Immigration Council, many children in recent years have had to navigate their immigration processes without legal representation. Ninety-five percent of minors with attorneys attend their court hearings, but only 33% of those without attorneys appear before a judge — an absence that can later lead to their deportation.

Attorney Jonathan Shaw, who has frequently seen unaccompanied minors before judges, explains that, since it is an administrative process, the government is not required to provide legal representation to minors. “The immigration process is different from criminal proceedings, where the state can provide a lawyer free of charge,” he says. And the high fees attorneys charge today are enough to make some families not even consider hiring one for their children, Shaw adds.

The situation has worsened in recent months after the Trump administration announced it was cutting the $200,000 annually allocated to organizations that offer legal assistance to around 26,000 migrant minors. Although a judge overturned the measure this month, several migrant advocacy groups claim the government has not restored the funds — sending a clear message: among the millions of undocumented people the Republican wants to expel from the country, children are no exception.

The fear of Daniela being deported to Cuba

Before the judge, Reyes did her best to justify why returning Daniela to Cuba was not an option. “She can’t be alone, without her mother. She can’t go back to Cuba because she will be constantly threatened, repressed at school by her own teachers. My daughter is not safe there because her father is not safe there. He was just released from prison two months ago and could be imprisoned again at any moment, because he’s openly fighting the Cuban dictatorship,” the mother insisted.

Until she was four years old, Daniela lived with her father. More than once, she saw him taken to prison, saw their house in the Altamira neighborhood of Santiago de Cuba being raided, saw how constant police surveillance prevented them from moving freely in the city.

There was a day when her father left and never returned. It was July 11, 2021, when Ferrer joined thousands of protesters in the largest anti-government demonstrations Cuba had seen. The opposition leader was released nearly four years later, after the regime agreed to free more than 500 political prisoners following Vatican mediation and a promise from the Biden administration to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. It wasn’t the first time Ferrer had set foot in Castro’s prison cells: he was one of the 75 prisoners of the so-called Black Spring, released by Raúl Castro in 2010 after talks with the Catholic Church and the Spanish government of José Luis Zapatero.

But for the court, that explanation wasn’t enough. “I don’t know who José Daniel Ferrer is,” the judge replied. Reyes suggested she verify the information online — explaining that the child’s father was one of the most well-known and high-profile Cuban dissidents, whose release had been demanded by numerous international organizations. But the judge was direct and curt: “No, I don’t have to look anything up.”

A short while later, Reyes was outside the courtroom, crying uncontrollably. She was trembling, her lips were pale, and her voice was shaky. “I couldn’t stop, from the frustration, the helplessness,” she says. “In that court, there were so many people being humiliated in front of their children. What you live through there is very intense.”

After her experience at the Dallas court, Reyes fears that, on any given day, the authorities might take Daniela away from her — after everything it took to have her daughter by her side. The mother began preparing for her daughter’s journey when she learned that Ferrer, already in prison, would take a long time to release her.

“My idea was always to get the girl out through family reunification, file a claim, and have her leave Cuba legally,” she says. “We didn’t want her to go through the dangers of crossing the border. But when I saw everything that was happening on the island, I felt terrible — José Daniel was in jail with no sign of being released — so I made the decision to get the girl out with my sister, who was pregnant.”

After a flight to Nicaragua and a journey that took them to Mexico, Daniela and her aunt arrived in the United States on August 21, 2022. Both were admitted into the country under status I-220A, an “Order of Supervision” granted to around 400,000 Cubans upon arrival at the border, which prevents them from benefiting from the Cuban Adjustment Act, which for years has allowed generations of Cubans to regularize their status. This is why young Daniela now has to file a case for political asylum.

It will be a long process, which could take months or even several years — an ordeal for both Daniela and her mother. Among all the questions the Dallas judge asked her, Reyes remembers one with particular clarity: “Do you know that the girl can be deported at any time under my order?” It’s the girl’s biggest fear, Reyes says. “Her greatest fear is that they’ll separate me from her again; she tells me this every night.”

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