People are grateful for the light bulb that turns on again, even if it goes out tomorrow.
14ymedio, José A. Adrián Torres, Malaga, September 7, 2025 — When the lights come back on after an hours-long blackout, it is a cause for celebration in Cuba. The arrival of an oil tanker gives rise to rumors and headlines that provide some relief, if only for a few days. A package of frozen chicken at the corner store can become a neighborhood’s main topic of conversation. Now, there is even a rumor circulating about a supposed “Phase 10,” a ten-year promise that is more fantasy and metaphor than an actual plan. It feels like a sophisticated form of deferred gratification, a dangling carrot that never relieves the hunger of the present, keeping citizens trapped in an endless state of wait-and-see. The “terminal phase” of a spent regime with no exit strategy, disguised using the language of plans, stages, and that reliable catchphrase, “We are taking measures.”
The logic is simple. Complete deprivation leads to disaster but intermittent deprivation keeps hope alive. Cuba’s leaders know this. The behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner knew this when he discovered that pigeons, pecking at a disc without knowing when they would receive food, did so more insistently than when the reward was predictable. Parents who dole out treats in dribs and drabs to encourage desired behaviors know this. So does a regime that turns everyday life into an experiment in behavioral psychology, not giving you what you deserve but offering you — from time to time — a spark, a respite, a promise. Just enough to keep you docile and expectant, and to stave off rebellion
The Cuban people, trapped in this cycle, veer between anxiety and hope. The are grateful to be able to turn on lights again but realize they might not be able to do so tomorrow. They welcome the pound of rice but they still cannot get meat. They latch onto the news of a ten-year economic plan even though they know that none of the previous plans worked.
How many times do you have to peck at the disc to before you can feel the joy of turning on a lamp, eating regularly or living with a sense of predictability?
Inevitably, the question arises: How many times do you have to peck at the disc before you can feel the joy of turning on a lamp, eating regularly or living with a sense of predictability? I feel it personally while waiting for the next call to see my “foster” nephews — ages ten and three — whom I love as if they were my own. Every encounter with them is a gift to me. But that gift does not always come when I am looking for it. Their mother manages these visits like unexpected rewards. Sometimes she gives me a last-minute heads-up. “If you want to see them,” she warns, “come now because we’re about to leave.”
I recognize this routine from my academic training as a psychologist as an example of variable-contingency reinforcement. I do not know how many times I will have to follow its rules, or when I will be rewarded with a visit with the children. While this uncertainty causes anxiety, it also makes me eager as I await the next call.
My mother used to describe something similar during her childhood in Spain in the 1940s, when a system of rationing similar to that in Cuba was in force. She would be given a doll as a Christmas present but, after playing with it for awhile, it was put away until the following year “so it would not get damaged.” The gift did actually exist but it was a thing denied her, a mixture of fantasy and frustration.
This is what an entire country is feeling today, transformed into a laboratory of intermittent reinforcement, where life is reduced to waiting for the next “prize,” which is simply the desire to live with dignity.
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