The first moment in a long time when she could lower her guard after everything she had been through to get there.

Her story began on the “Isla de la Juventud”, a small island off Havana, Cuba.

She lived in a boarding school from Sunday to Friday, sharing a room with fifty other girls, twenty-five bunk beds, six showers, and a couple of toilets.

The routines were clear.

Wake up, queue to brush the teeth, put on your uniform, gossip along the way.

Before breakfast, they would sing the national anthem.

Then came classes or fieldwork: planting potatoes, cutting grass, harvesting sweet potatoes or grapefruits.

The food was barely enough: Bread and milk in the morning, rice and beans with “jamonada” at lunch.

They were always hungry. Sometimes, she and her friends would collect leftovers from others into a small container to eat later.

Wednesdays were different. The parents visiting day.

Her mother would bring her food. Maye would tie it to her feet before going to sleep so no one could steal it.

They stole it anyway.

On Wednesdays, after the visits, there was music. Salsa. It was their moment to dress up, use perfume, and dance until ten at night.
The next day, everything went back to routine.
One day, her stepfather came home with lobsters he had bought on the black market.

Eating lobster was not just a luxury, it was illegal.

In every neighbourhood there was someone watching: The “jefe del barrio” (the boss of the neighbourhood.

Maye and her family close every door and window of their wooden house.

In that tense silence, Mayela tasted lobster for the first time. She didn’t know if she was eating… or hiding.

As soon as they finished, they wrapped the remains in layers of plastic bags and threw them away far from home.

No one could know.

Leaving the island slowly became her dream.

Her father had done it before.

He left by sea, on inflated inner tubes, hoping someone would find him before the ocean did.

They did. The police found him.

He was taken to Guantánamo prison, where he spent a year in detention. Later, he managed to rebuild his life in Miami.

A few times a month, Maye would go to a cyber café to write to him. Email was one of the few things she could access because public control was strict.

Her father knew a woman, a specialist in help people to leave the island.

The plan sounded simple: get an invitation letter to Ecuador, apply for a visa, and leave. From there, she would travel to Guatemala, receive a new identity, cross into Mexico, and eventually reach the United States.

She tried once.

The visa was denied.

But the woman has powerful connections and Maye tried again.

This time, it worked and in February 2024, she arrived in Ecuador.

Ecuador welcomed her.

Her father was there to receive her and welcome her to what he called freedom.

They went looking for other Cubans and in a small bar, dancing salsa, they met María Elsi, an Ecuadorian woman who was moved by Maye’s story. She offered her a room and, over time, became something like family.

While she prepared for the next step, Guatemala, her father arranged false documents from Mexico.

Guatemala did not receive her like Ecuador had.

She was held at the airport for being Cuban, questioned, exposed and almost sent back to Cuba.

She managed to enter, but something had shifted.

As the days passed, the next step came closer: crossing one of the most feared borders in the world: Mexico into the United States.

She had heard too many stories, stories where women, if lucky, made it out alive.

Then they handed her the passport.

Her new identity.

Oralia Rubalcaba Rodríguez.

She held it in her hands and for a moment, she didn’t know who she was.

She was no longer Mayela, the Cuban; but she wasn’t Oralia either.

That same night, she called her father and she told him she wouldn’t continue, that she was going back to Ecuador.

He didn’t understand.

After everything he had done to get her out of Cuba, he would have preferred she returned to Cuba and fight with her mom than stay in a country he barely considered to exist.

But the decision had already been made and Maye was not going to cross.

Ecuador received her again.

She returned with fear, but also with a clear decision: to stay and build a life among the mountains.

She started slowly as all meaningful things do.

She looked for work, adapted, met people.

Between attempts and changes, she began to build a life. And without noticing, something shifted: She felt more present.

Surrounded by people who made her question who she really was, she learned to live with more awareness, no longer on autopilot.

She now lives on the slopes of the Pichincha volcano, holding onto the idea that even in the middle of fear and uncertainty, there is always the possibility to choose.

And that, sometimes, changes everything.

Today, she dreams of bringing her mother out of Cuba.

Her mother dreams of it too.

And of eating grapes, chocolate… and a whole chicken.