Hatred was planted, managed, and turned into official state policy
14ymedio, Rafael Bordao, Miami, 5 March 2026 — Some nations move forward, stumble, and reinvent themselves. Others—like Cuba—have been sentenced to walk in circles, dragging along a sacrifice that stopped being noble a long time ago and turned into straight-up punishment. For decades, everyday life became one long string of giving things up: giving up freedom, giving up your voice, giving up any future, even giving up the basic right to imagine a different life.
The sacrifice stopped being heroic and became a control tool. The people were sacrificed to save the power structure—not the other way around. Generation after generation, the same shoulders carried the shortages, the surveillance, the forced obedience, the endless waiting. The ruling elite, shielded by their privileges, never once felt the sting of the ration lines, the blackouts, the fear, the forced exile. So the question becomes almost philosophical: What kind of system needs its own people to suffer just so it can keep existing?
The hatred didn’t come from the hearts of Cubans. It was sown, administered, turned into state policy. To justify the repression, they needed an enemy. To justify the poverty, they needed someone to blame. To justify the constant watching, they needed traitors.
Hatred has an ontological cost it destroys living together, it eats away at memory, and it fractures the shared identity of a people.
That hatred was fed with endless speeches, school textbooks that confused history with propaganda, newscasts repeating the same fear-based liturgy, compulsory marches where unanimity was just another way to stay alive. Hatred became a renewable resource—there was always someone to blame, always an “other” threatening the purity of the project. But hatred carries a deep cost: it destroys coexistence, corrodes memory, and breaks the collective identity. And when a country lives too long under the logic of “the enemy,” it ends up suspicious even of itself.
Nobody voted for this sentence. Nobody chose to hand over their life to a dogma that can’t even sustain the air we breathe anymore. Nobody signed a contract to give up freedom of movement, freedom of thought, freedom to create. That decision was made by a small circle at the top that confused staying in power with saving the homeland, that turned ideology into a compulsory religion and history into a monologue with no cracks.
All that’s left is the question that tears everything apart: How much longer?
That elite decided the country had to keep paying forever for a dream that stopped being a dream and became an alibi; they decided the people had to immolate themselves so they could keep ruling; they decided the nation was a laboratory and the citizens were disposable pieces. Political philosophy teaches us that any power that demands sacrifice without offering freedom is an illegitimate power. But in Cuba that illegitimacy was normalized, ritualized, turned into the everyday scenery.
Today the official discourse floats around like an empty shell. The regulations no longer move anyone, the heroes no longer inspire, the promises no longer fool anybody. The country is exhausted. People don’t believe anymore, don’t hope anymore, don’t fear the way they used to. The dogma has become an ideological fossil that can’t explain the ruin, the massive emigration, the despair you can feel on every corner. When a dogma stops holding up, all that remains is the question that dismantles everything: How much longer?
Writing about Cuba is writing against silence. It’s an act of rebellion, but also of mourning. It’s recognizing that the country was wounded by the very people who swore to save it. It’s saying that memory can no longer be kidnapped by a single story. It’s claiming the right to ask questions, to doubt, to disagree, to imagine. Because a country isn’t saved with orders—it’s saved with truth. It isn’t rebuilt with fear—it’s rebuilt with dignity. It isn’t freed with hatred—it’s freed with justice.
Translated by GH
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