The RAE dictionary does not yet recognize the meaning of the verb that defines life on the Island under real socialism.
14ymedio, José A. Adrián Torres, Malaga (Spain), 5 October 2025 — Cuba—like so many other nations—proudly displays its national symbols: the national bird, the tocororo; the national tree, the royal palm; the national flower, the white butterfly. And even a musical group, with the mordacity that comes with Creole humor, dared to add to the list what should be the national mammal: the pig.
But the island also has an emblem that no other country would dare proclaim and that doesn’t appear in civics manuals or on propaganda posters: its national verb. That verb, which isn’t conjugated in the dictionaries of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) with the precise meaning it has in Cuba, but which has explained daily life for more than three decades: To resolve.
Because if anything has characterized the average Cuban since the Special Period, it’s the need to solve problems. To resolve is not “solving a problem,” as the Academy in Madrid still insists. Solving problems, in Cuba, is finding what is missing, with ingenuity, connections, or cunning. Solving problems means putting food on the table when the state doesn’t guarantee it; it is getting gasoline in the shadow of the Cupet*; it is finding a spare part for the old Lada; it’s “inventing” whatever comes along. Solving problems isn’t a technique: it is an art of survival.
Before getting to that verb, it is worth remembering that Cuba has given the world much more than official symbols. Its music crosses borders: from Lecuona to Formell, from son to mambo, from danzón to bolero, leading to the omnipresent salsa and reggaeton that resonate on every corner today.
Its literature left universal names: Martí, Carpentier, Lezama, Padura. Even sports were patriotic: baseball, adopted on the island and transformed into a continental passion—until the more recent arrival of soccer fans.
And in language, the island and its Caribbean neighbors added treasures that the RAE eventually accepted: huracán from Taíno; guateque for the campesina festival; maraca and bongó for instruments that are now universal; and ñángara, which already sounds like an ideological relic—although some will remain.
The verb crystallized in the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union left Cuba without subsidies, and with an economic black hole.
But alongside these established contributions, the most “essential” is missing, the most genuine, the one that encapsulates the experience of several generations: To resolve. This verb crystallized in the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union left Cuba without subsidies and with an economic black hole. Where there was scarcity, nothingness appeared. And with it, the obligation to invent, scrounge, and hustle. The Special Period transformed millions into acrobats of ingenuity and gave them a verb that governs their lives to this day.
An old Cuban friend, who endured those years with resignation and now lives in Miami, summed it up this way: “Cubans don’t steal, my friend; they take what’s coming to them. It’s just that they haven’t gotten it yet.” The phrase encapsulates a twisted but coherent ethic: the State promised, failed to deliver, and the citizen feels entitled to take what they need. They don’t steal: they resolve.
And among the middle-ranking “cadres,” those second-tier leaders and rank-and-file militants, another recurring justification circulated when it came to “interfering” in something: “Cadre, defense is allowed.” It was like saying: ” You can be unfaithful, but not disloyal.” My friend claims to have heard it thousands of times. Phrases like that shaped the socialist morality of the “New Man,” in which to resolve was articulated with egalitarianism and other supposed “values” of the Revolution.
This ethic has disrupted the scale of prestige. In Cuba, true prosperity lies not in a university diploma or an academic degree, but in access to the circuit of the resolvable. The social pyramid is inverted—although perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there is no pyramid, but rather that there are only those at the top and those at the bottom: doctors and engineers survive on symbolic salaries, while the hotel bartender, the taxi driver who charges in dollars, or the person who handles tourism contacts earn more than a doctor in Physics. Medicine is prestigious, but tourism—and remittances and other junk—resolve, at least until recently they did. And everyone knows that.
That’s why on the island the national verb is conjugated like a calling card: “How do you resolve it?”, “Did you resolve it?”, “That guy really resolved it.” The admiration falls not on the one who works hard, but on the one who resolves it the best. It becomes a national championship of cunning, where cheating ceases to be shameful and becomes a social virtue.
The cost, of course, is high. To resolve erodes any notion of legality, merit, or professional ethics. It normalizes living on the blurred borders of what is permissible, turning “invention” into a system and precariousness into a culture. To resolve is the verb of lack, but also the shield that justifies everyday deception.
The cost, of course, is high. To resolve erodes any notion of legality, merit, or professional ethics.
The paradox is that a country that enriched Spanish with musical and Taino voices, that contributed poetry, rhythms, and universal symbols, has been reduced to a verb that the Academy doesn’t recognize with the nuance that the Cuban street brings to it. It would be fair to add:
To resolve, in Cuba: refers to the art of surviving under real socialism.
That definition would say more than many official reports. After all, dictionaries capture what people use and experience. And Cubans have been conjugating that verb in the present tense for over thirty years: “I resolve, you resolve, he resolves.” In the plural, it sounds even clearer: “You all resolve.” And those who go into exile continue to carry it with them, as a mark of origin: they resolve in Miami, Madrid, or Cancún.
Meanwhile, the island continues to present its symbols: the tocororo, the royal palm, the white butterfly, the pig as an informal emblem. But more than any other symbol, what defines Cuba today is a verb. And that verb, ironic and sad, is not to sing, not to dance, not to dream: it is to resolve.
*Cupet – for more, see here.
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