It is pleasant, stimulating and helpful to approach the reflections of the renowned Cuban psychologist, Patricia Arés Muzio. His understanding of human behavior and historical circumstances opens up a wide world of perspectives that, unfortunately, are not the most popular.
Social networks are full of “advisers” and “advisors” whose common denominator is: “take charge of yourself.” There are many people who uncritically consume these approaches; phenomenon that is not foreign to the Cuban reality.
Where to get into the topic of psychological discomfort? What analysis variables should be taken into account? Is it a strictly personal problem? What conditions and scope does social unrest have in Cuba, plunged into a deep crisis?
About these issues I spoke with Professor Patricia Arés, whose analysis leaves necessary guidelines to raise awareness about this issue and expand potential avenues for solutions.
From the perspective of psychology, what conditions and implications does social unrest have?
Every society, in any historical context, generates degrees of subjective discomfort. Social unrest has spread globally in the most diverse ways, be it in protest against injustice or in complaint against harm, be it in the promise of another world or in the claim for this world, in the expectation of happiness or rebellion against misfortune; discomfort objects, questions, interrogates.
The world, despite the great showcase of opportunities and the media discourse of happiness and prosperity, generates an increasing amount of social unrest, an increase in depression and anxiety crises in broad sectors.
Social unrest is not only an expression of individual subjectivity, it constitutes a dimension of social subjectivity, configured in the context of the interactions of individuals and their social groups and conditioned economically, socially, historically and culturally.
In the current Cuban situation it is important to analyze the confluences and divergences in the way in which emotional pain, psychological suffering, is articulated with collective misfortune; the annoyances shared with public discontent, since they influence and enhance each other, but are managed and processed through different courses and channels.
The social symptoms of malaise have particular forms of expression; They are associated with a collective feeling of restlessness, existential insecurity and uncertainty with the future, resignation and helplessness, feelings of vulnerability and lack of control over one’s life, short-term horizons and imbalances in expectations.
Some studies argue that a higher degree of social unrest is directly correlated with increased poverty.
From individual subjectivity, social discomfort manifests itself through various diseases that today are called “emerging social pathologies”: generalized stress and anxiety, increased depression, panic attacks, “burnout syndrome” in work life and as a caregiver, post-traumatic stress, suicidal impulses, various forms of abuse and violence, consumer pathologies, such as drug use, compulsive buying, bulimia, obesity, gambling mania and technology addicts.
What are the specific manifestations of social unrest in our country? What relationship does it have with the current and widespread crisis?
In just a few years, Cuba has experienced a series of changes that have significantly impacted the subjectivity of Cuban men and women. The negative effects on health indicators (physical and emotional) are becoming more evident every day due to the precariousness of life.
I have had the opportunity as a psychologist to accompany many people and families throughout my professional career. It is not difficult to verify the growing increase in various age groups and family units of affected subjectivities: symptoms of anxiety, depression, sustained stress, high blood pressure, insomnia, myocardial infarctions, psychosomatic diseases, whose causes go beyond their purely individual or biological components, caused by the number of difficult-to-solve problems they face.
The increase in various indicators of discomfort is palpable: a feeling of economic suffocation; frustration regarding the future of the children; loss of hope of improving living conditions; loss of ability to manage one’s own life (especially retired older adults); feeling of helplessness in the face of realities; future uncertainty; feelings of helplessness in the face of delays in medical treatment; perception that the health system unequally distributes opportunities and risks; immigration duels; family dismemberments; quality of teachers, conditions of schools and school materials; weakening of formal and informal support networks and available social capital (friends, known health professionals, people who offered guarantees of support from different services).
Added to this glossary is the deterioration of the social fabric of our daily lives, where the hint of contractual, instrumental and economic relations erode the bonds of trust, the relationships of gratuitousness and solidarity, respect, and belonging.
In this context, families are becoming “precarious structures” that are organized around the subsistence and care of people in situations of dependency (children and adolescents, dependent older adults, people with disabilities) in which the health of their members, well-being and development in terms of personal fulfillment and upward social mobility are significantly compromised.
What other elements should be taken into account to analyze the nature and scope of social unrest in Cuba?
Given the evidence of these conditions, any attempt at reductionism in the reading of complex social processes can simplify the analysis and obscure the interaction of factors that trigger unrest. The current crisis ranges from the economic and social, while weighing on the cultural and spiritual.
Despite the impact of the socio-structural measures that were taken in the country in the 90s, the will to “save the conquests of the Revolution” remained in the social imagination, with the historical leader at the forefront who represented a unifying force and an important factor in consensus and social cohesion. The crisis of the Special Period did not result in the collective confusion of the current crisis.
Among the contents recorded in the discursive matrices of the people interviewed in the investigations and areas of psychological consultation, the perception of weakening of the protective function of the State stands out. Cuban society went from the idea of a giving, protective state to a noticeable weakening of the protection of the State. Today, there is a kind of helplessness or feeling of “who is taking care of these problems?”, which produces feelings of anguish and vulnerability.
The exhaustion of sacrificial ethics is included among those contents. The sacrificial ethic is exhausted by the reiteration and progressive aggravation of living conditions and the felt perception that the continued efforts of previous generations have failed to fulfill their promises of well-being and prosperity.
Among the most recurring issues is the loss of intersubjective support from friends, neighbors and family. We cannot avoid the fact that we have been subjects of multiple spaces of socialization, almost exclusively in the world: family, friends, study colleagues, co-workers, the neighborhood, the block, the scholarship. This sui generis reality has served as an intersubjective underpinning for the Cuban men and women with whom we learned to relate, always a friend at hand, a co-worker, a neighbor. The Cuban’s problem was never loneliness.
The migratory exodus of the last two years has meant a significant loss of that social capital for each of the Cubans of different age groups, which has enhanced feelings of mourning, helplessness and lack of protection.
Is it possible to overcome this social unrest? What conditions would be necessary?
The first thing would be not to ignore the issue. Social unrest is an issue that cuts across society as a whole, with implications for the political agenda and institutions.
In this sense, it is necessary to offer social operators, communicators, psychologists, psychiatrists, family doctors, social workers and policy introducers, routes of understanding and analysis tools of the factors that generate high levels of social unrest and how to ensure that it is processed in a way that favors health and well-being.
It is worth remembering that, to achieve better standards of health and well-being, a minimum level of satisfaction of basic needs is needed, a material prosperity that transcends and reaches the spiritual.
In the process of containing social unrest, the educational institutions, the school, the family, social institutions, must offer meanings of life full of humanity, cultivating relationships of love and solidarity, advocating for the full exercise of rights, participation in collective projects; foster passion for the arts, literature, cinema, knowledge, music, which are important spiritual reserves that our country preserves as antidotes to social unrest.
Our nation project today has to count on those who are inside, but also with those who are outside and show the willingness to contribute. Immigration policies should not conspire with the loss of roots of those who decide to emigrate, not only so that they do not remain anchored in nostalgia, resentment and longing, but so that they feel the opportunity to remain linked to their land.
In the search for solutions, it is also important to recognize the transformative capacity of social unrest: potential generator of new ideas to transform reality. This channels the “worthy dissatisfaction”, the “just courage”, the “necessary claim” against inequality or the violation of basic rights.
It is essential that discontent does not lead to destructive violence or psychological suffering established as personal insufficiency, but rather to the recognition of a “timely rage” that does not make one sick or attack, but rather protects one’s own dignity and that of others, which is channeled into a desire to change society for the better, transfiguring public discontent into shared social action.
The achievement of a better society does not come from passive resignation and exile within private life. The healthy thing is that our society gives voice to social unrest where there are possible solutions to the problems, in collective solutions, in the abandonment of rigid and inoperative social schemes, in institutional responses, in effective public policies.
