PHOTO ESSAY: Elderly Cubans cope with a deepening economic crisis

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s elderly are among those bearing the heaviest burden of the island’s deepening economic crisis, which has worsened since the start of the year after an oil embargo imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Even before the latest downturn, Cuba already had one of the oldest populations in Latin America, shaped by long life expectancy and low birth rates.

By the end of 2024, nearly 26% of Cuba’s population was age 60 or older, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics, almost twice the regional average of 14.2% reported by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Many are former state workers living on meager pensions, facing cuts to long-subsidized goods and increasing loneliness as younger Cubans continue to emigrate. Over the past five years, Cuba’s population has fallen by nearly 1.5 million, largely because of migration.

The island's elderly were young when Fidel Castro entered Havana. Now, in old age, they are confronting a new period of scarcity that is testing how far pensions, rationed goods and personal resilience can stretch. The impact is visible in daily life: Elderly people walk the streets alone, stand in long lines for bread and rice, and increasingly depend on churches and some state institutions for basic meals.

One such place is the Church of the Holy Spirit in Old Havana, where nearly 50 elderly residents gather three times a week for a modest hot meal of ground meat, rice, red beans and crackers topped with mayonnaise. For many, the meals offer more than nourishment. They provide a small measure of routine, relief and company during long days of shortages, outages and solitude.

Among them was Mercedes Lopez Rey, a retired engineer who until her death went to the church three...