By Amalia and Ignacio
To be born under a dictatorship is to be born with a priori fear — you have it, you live it, you suffer it, and often you don’t even realize that it’s part of your generational DNA. Even less do you understand that your adolescent rebellion is shaped by that fear that cloaks everything like an invisible veil, like morning dew — you feel it because your feet are already soaked.
From an early age, you learn there are things you don’t mention, and if you do, it must be in complete confidence and never aloud. There are thoughts that, even if you have them, should not be spoken in public, and it doesn’t matter if everyone agrees — you don’t say them. You internalize that it’s forbidden. And in doing so, you gradually forget your civic freedoms within a society that dissolves into itself.
The atmosphere of constant caution and surveillance results from power structures that maintain a system that is fundamentally flawed. The most basic fear people experience is the fear of punishment. This fear is instilled from a young age until it becomes second nature; it is then externalized and enforced depending on one’s position in society. Whether punishment is intended to be educational or not, it diminishes individuals — it illustrates how weak and subservient one can become. When people observe the punishment of others in Cuban society, the loss of freedom transforms from an abstract idea into a tangible reality.
Living in fear creates insecurity, vulnerability, and hinders your personal growth. It leads you to suppress your opinions, hesitate to share your ideas, struggle with decision-making, and conceal your true self. You constantly worry about losing your job, being blacklisted, being labeled as counterrevolutionary, or facing punishment.
Living in fear creates insecurity, vulnerability, and hinders your personal growth. It leads you to suppress your opinions, hesitate to share your ideas, struggle with decision-making, and conceal your true self.
Revolutionary Cuba has utilized various methods of punishment, ranging from the most extreme, such as summary trials and firing squads, to more subtle forms like cutting off water and electricity, placing black marks on academic or employment records, and conducting public acts of repudiation outside the homes of those punished. Punishment leaves a lasting impact; it wounds and creates a form of social stigma—a label that follows you, marking you as persecuted.
There is another type of fear that takes on various forms: the fear of the enemy. The enemy is often seen as our neighbor across the street, representing a segment of Cuban society that has long settled elsewhere, particularly in the United States. This pervasive fear is one of the Cuban government’s most effective tools. As a result, one of the easiest ways to discredit someone is to label them a traitor. Historically, this practice has contributed to a division in Cuban society between those who have family or friends abroad and those who do not.
The paradox lies in the fact that the State positions itself as the protector of its people while simultaneously victimizing them. The regime instills specific fears because it needs to create a pervasive, generalized sense of fear to enforce total control—one that operates quietly and almost imperceptibly, hidden within the daily struggle for survival. We’ve heard it many times: they keep us preoccupied with the necessities of life. Over the decades, the Cuban Revolution has consistently failed to manage the crises that restrict access to drinking water, food, medicine, electricity, and, more recently, the internet. This has left society fragile and vulnerable; the more they suffer, the more they rely on the State—and vice versa.
Every day, Cuban families face the same pressing questions: What will we eat? When will the water come back? Do we have electricity? Life becomes a continuous struggle to survive day by day. All their energy is devoted to making it to the next morning, with the constant threats of hunger, lack of water, electricity, or medicine looming over them.
The State has allowed violence to flourish. In recent years, the country has reached extremes never before seen. We live on an island where any sign of opposition is swiftly suppressed, but street crime dances freely in broad daylight. Common violence becomes another form of social control — if you’re afraid to go outside, you stay safe (and controlled) inside. So much so that waves of violence tend to spike during specific times of the year. The most common: the end of the year, coinciding with another anniversary of the Revolution’s triumph. “Don’t go out, the streets are dangerous,” “Come back quickly, things are bad,” “Go straight home.” These are common refrains in every Cuban household, because fear lives inside them. All of this shows that at least part of Cuba’s power structure rests on the fear it instills in its people.
Another fear prevalent in today’s Cuba is the fear of being neglected by the State, a fear that affects all sectors of society. There’s fear, for instance, of being hospitalized — not only because of illness itself, but because it’s widely known that entering a hospital can be fatal given the conditions they’re in.
The labor sector is not immune to these challenges. For decades, having a state job has been associated with unemployment for many due to low wages. The fear of not being able to support one’s family has pushed engineers, doctors, teachers, and other professionals to seek employment in more profitable sectors, further reinforcing the distorted economic structure in Cuba. What may appear as an individual tragedy ultimately becomes a social catastrophe.
There are endless examples of the many fears Cubans endure today. Take housing: the physical state of buildings reflects this fear. Time, neglect, and cracks make homes increasingly fragile, and hurricanes inevitably come. For a large segment of the population, their home is a constant threat to their lives. Sleep is no longer safe.
This social catastrophe also forces the acceptance of premature psychological aging. Young people are born old — they become elderly workers. The absence of social mobility, the certainty that your first paycheck will look like your last, generates a fear of the future that expresses itself in countless ways. But the solution always seems to be the same: to leave, to escape — anywhere.
The government knows this and fuels fear of the world beyond Cuba. There is nothing more depressing than the National News Broadcast. Through its lens, the world is a battlefield of endless war, plagues, disease, economic crises — an infinite list of injustices, primarily originating from the enemy that has besieged us since the revolutionary victory in 1959. That same newscast paints a Cuba that meets its economic and agricultural goals and promises an economic independence that, after nearly seven decades of Revolution, still hasn’t arrived. They don’t say it directly, but the entire semiotic structure of the official media screams: the world is dangerous — better not to go.
This instills in much of the population a fear of living outside the island — a fear only overcome by the desperation and panic of daily survival: not knowing when the power or water will go out again, or if there will be medicine when needed. There is fear of leaving, and fear of staying. There is a fear of living.
Fear is a double-edged sword because the government, too, is afraid that we will stop fearing it. It reminds us, threatens, manipulates, and punishes its allies and most loyal defenders to quiet things down whenever convenient. Popular Cuban phrases like: “He’s on pajama duty now,” “He exploded,” “He fell from grace,” exemplify what happens to those who once upheld the politics of fear. But anyone who dares, in any way, to deviate from the system, regardless of their past, will be punished by any means necessary.
The current government has enshrined censorship into law, which is just one example of the many forms of punishment embedded within the Cuban Constitution. Today, posting something critical of the Revolution on social media can lead to severe consequences. People live in fear of even liking such content, despite agreeing with what they read on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
This book, too, is part of that fear. Some remained silent and never responded to the invitation to participate. Others agreed but later backed out — afraid of punishment, repression, or police abuse. And it’s understandable — there will always be uncertainty when one exposes oneself to the system. The game is laid bare, and we find ourselves stripped of the protective shadow of living in hiding. Because freedom is the opposite of shadow — it is light. And the worst part of Plato’s cave isn’t the fire’s glow — it’s the shadows cast upon the wall that pass for reality and make us afraid of the true light: freedom.
This is how Cubans live: with fears that are both concrete and abstract, real and imagined, along with others that no longer make sense — yet they remain part of a historical and collective paranoia. Life flows from one fear to another, and our sorrows are drowned in a bottle of rum that harms us with every sip. In the end, that’s all that’s left: an island that feels like one big bottle, filled with the dead.
