Cubans on the island, not having full enjoyment of their rights, suffer from a social defenselessness that emigrants from other systems of government do not suffer.
14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Miami, 30 June 2025 — Many years ago, I came to the conclusion that leaving Cuba generates very significant personality transformations in many people. I have witnessed such radical changes. I know of heads of families, once strong-willed, demanding, and steadfast in their environment, who have given up the spaces they once zealously defended, having to assume the abandoned leadership role by someone of their own lineage. This reveals the great potential of every human being to rebuild their existence and the inability of others to cope with change.
I had a chance conversation about this with journalist Rolando Nápoles, an excellent reporter. Nápoles told me that these spontaneous changes could be identified as the Miami Syndrome, because he had also observed that people who in Cuba had held a certain position on the island’s reality and a different way of living life, changed completely abroad, regardless of the context in which they worked and regardless of any political commitments they may have had.
“Jumping the pond,” as writer Jose Antonio Albertini calls leaving Cuba, truly exerts a profound influence on expatriates. Life changes radically, the abusive paternalism of the totalitarian state disappears, and individuals fully assume their civic responsibilities for the first time. This demands a remarkable ability for reinvention, especially when a person is over forty and has a family to support.
The limitations imposed by the control that the system exercises over the person are so intense and unfathomable that the capacity for individual management is practically zero.
Cubans on the island, lacking full enjoyment of their rights, suffer from a social vulnerability that immigrants from other systems of government do not experience. The limitations imposed by the system’s control over individuals are so intense and unfathomable that one’s capacity for individual agency is practically nonexistent.
The relationship between individuals and their environment in a free society is open, with responsibility down to the smallest detail. In Cuba, this is not the case. The island citizen is burdened by the condition that only what is explicitly authorized can be undertaken; a simple thought, let alone an action, can constitute a crime.
There are many other characteristics that can impact Cuban emigrants, regardless of their ideological or political beliefs, such as the change in economic activity to support themselves or their families. Many professionals find themselves unable to perform the duties for which they were trained and are forced to take on tasks they may never have imagined. Others find themselves facing unplanned career and social opportunities, and even unimaginable health changes.
There is no lack of those who, far from their country and despite having been treated like sheep by the regime, are always ready to justify and serve it.
I know individuals who had a sympathetic view of totalitarianism, blaming foreign factors, and even those who had previously left the country, for the corrupt and inept actions of the island regime. However, new knowledge and experience led them to change their minds, taking a position of condemnation and rejection of the system. I have particularly appreciated this profound change of perspective among those who left Cuba for economic reasons and among those sectors on the island who worked in the arts and academia or carried out government activities.
However, there are those who, far from their country and despite having been treated like sheep by the regime, are always ready to justify and serve it. Unfortunately, there are individuals who use their privileges as free citizens to defend the dictatorship and despotism, to justify its depredations, however horrific they may be. However, most, based on the knowledge they have acquired, change their perspectives, no matter how blind they may have been.
On the other hand, and in all honesty, we all change, and most of us feel a closeness to the Island that fuels a nostalgia that never ceases to grow. Being away from one’s homeland offers anyone interested an almost unlimited panoramic view of national life, past and present. The emigrant or exile who loves their country seeks to treasure their homeland’s traditions and strives to ensure that new generations preserve their mother tongue. They love what they left behind, with the Martí-like hope of one day bidding farewell to the shores of exile.
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