In her diary, Cuban Irina Pino describes how December 31, 2025, lost its appeal for many families amid family separations, shortages, and blackouts. While some hold hopes for the new year, she chose a solitary celebration, fondly recalling past times.
December 31, 2025, a date that still evokes celebrations for some Cuban families, turned into a day of pain for others, overshadowed by family separations, material shortages, power outages, and illnesses. In her diary entry published in Havana Times, Irina Pino highlights the return of emigrants to the United States who were deported and now face a bleak outlook, leading to moral defeat and mental exhaustion.
Pino shares her personal experience: most of her loved ones live in another country, and while she receives food assistance, emotional warmth is impossible through apps like WhatsApp. Her day passed without major events; she sent cards to friends to remind them of their mutual support, and tended to household chores like cooking and washing, taking advantage of mostly stable electricity, with only a brief morning outage.
Despite the sadness over people's optimistic belief that 2026 will bring change, greetings of health and prosperity are exchanged. A nearby friend invited her to dinner to avoid loneliness, but Pino preferred staying in her room, bundled against the cold, watching a movie on her computer—a yearly ritual allowing escape to other worlds.
Joy came from WhatsApp calls with her nieces and sister, where they laughed recalling family gatherings organized by her parents: her father's homemade sweets, the effort to obtain bottles of cider and wine, and the midnight tradition of throwing water to wash away the negative. What mattered most, she reflects, was being together, a bond they never imagined would fracture so deeply.
