The reaction to my last article It has been as intense as it has been revealing. I have read one by one all the comments it generated, inside and outside Cuba. There are harsh messages, some loaded with accusations and disqualifications; Others written from anger or accumulated frustration. I have also received generous words, calm reflections and messages from people genuinely concerned about me, about the consequences of expressing myself frankly in such a sensitive context.
From the island there has been no shortage of voices of support or respectful exchanges, along with other reactions marked by surprise or discomfort, even from people who today hold public responsibilities. All of this confirms that expressing different opinions continues to stir deep sensitivities. But it also confirms that there is a pending conversation that deserves to be held calmly, respectfully and responsibly.
None of this surprises me at all. What does worry me is the level of hatred and resentment that easily emerges when someone deviates from the expected script. I’m not talking about criticism. Criticism is necessary. I’m talking about the impulse to dehumanize the other, to reduce them to a label, to turn them into an enemy.
How can we build a country if we are not capable of living with the diversity of criteria and opinions? Plurality is not a threat. It is the only fertile ground from which a society can regenerate. Everything else leads to stagnation and resentment.
Years ago I wrote a text titled “What happens to us Cubans?“I wondered, with genuine concern, why our chronic inability to listen to each other without canceling each other out, why this tendency to turn any difference into an absolute moral dispute. Today that question returns with more force, because the context has made it urgent.
The Cuban Revolution was born, for many, as a promise of justice. Along the way, however, it generated a power structure that ended up producing exclusion, forced silences and deep fractures. From that process a generation emerged that today carries historical responsibilities that are not always examined with nuances.
Faced with this, another dangerous temptation now arises: to indiscriminately prosecute all those who governed, collaborated or simply survived within the system, and extend that judgment beyond individual decisions, reaching even those who did not make them, but carry surnames, ties or inheritances that they did not choose.
The uncomfortable question is inevitable: do we want to reproduce a logic of collective punishment that ends up creating a new generation of hatred?
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany chose to integrate rather than humiliate, judging specific responsibilities and not collective identities. South Africa prioritized the truth to avoid revenge. Spain, after Franco, chose an imperfect but peaceful transition. No path was ideal; everyone avoided something worse.
Cuba has not yet had a historic closure. Without a minimum agreement that allows progress, the wound remains open. And the open wounds are filled with suspicion and resentment.
What we see today is not just political polarization; It is emotional polarization. The pain of exile, family separation, scarcity and lost opportunities is real. That pain exists on both shores.
In Cuba there are people who experience severe economic pressure as an unfair reality and who blame Miami, the diaspora or decisions made outside the island for a situation that they feel is deeply limiting.
Recognizing that feeling, even if not all of its conclusions are shared, is essential. Denying it only deepens the fracture. Turning that pain into hate condemns us to repeat ourselves.
After so many years of division, perhaps the greatest act of responsibility is to ask ourselves not only what we defended, but how we did it and whether that path brought us closer or further away from the country we want.
I do not defend silence or amnesia. I invite respect and the ability to disagree without destroying the other. Honest criticism opens paths; moral lynching closes them.
Let’s move together in the same direction. Let us form a moral pact, an alliance that makes us advance as a single body in favor of the progress of our nation, the prosperity of each Cuban and putting aside personal hatreds.
Cuba will never be prosperous if we Cubans are not prosperous. And prosperity is also tolerance.
I wish for a Cuba capable of forging a new historical stage, not from oblivion, but from the conscious will not to repeat the cycles of punishment and resentment that have marked us. Justice and truth are essential. Reconciliation, too. Without a minimum ethic of mutual recognition, no nation is possible.
We still have time to do it differently. It requires leadership, temperance and the conscious will not to resemble what we say we want to overcome.
