The reaction to my latest article has been as intense as it has been revealing. I have read every single comment it generated, both inside and outside Cuba. Some were harsh, filled with accusations and disqualifications; others were written from accumulated anger or frustration. I have also received generous words, thoughtful reflections, and messages from people genuinely concerned about me and about the consequences of speaking frankly in such a sensitive context.
From the island, there have been voices of support and respectful exchanges, alongside reactions marked by surprise or discomfort, even from individuals who today hold public responsibilities. All of this confirms that expressing different opinions continues to stir deep sensitivities. But it also confirms that there is a pending conversation that deserves to be sustained with calm, respect, and responsibility.
None of this entirely surprises me. What does concern me is the level of hatred and resentment that emerges so easily when someone steps outside the expected script. I am not speaking about criticism. Criticism is necessary. I am speaking about the impulse to dehumanize the other, to reduce them to a label, and to turn them into an enemy.
How can we build a country if we are not capable of living with a diversity of views and opinions? Plurality is not a threat. It is the only fertile ground from which a society can regenerate itself. Everything else leads to stagnation and resentment.
Years ago, I wrote a piece titled “What Is Wrong with Us Cubans” I asked, with genuine concern, why we have such a chronic inability to listen without canceling one another, why we tend to turn every difference into an absolute moral dispute. Today that question returns with greater urgency, because the moment demands it.
The Cuban Revolution was born, for many, as a promise of justice. Along the way, however, it generated a power structure that produced exclusion, forced silences, and deep fractures. From that process emerged a generation that today carries historical responsibilities not always examined with nuance.
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In response, another dangerous temptation now arises: to indiscriminately judge all those who governed, collaborated, or simply survived within the system —and to extend that judgment beyond individual decisions, reaching even those who did not make them but carry surnames, ties, or inheritances they did not choose.
The uncomfortable question is inevitable: do we want to reproduce a logic of collective punishment that creates yet another generation shaped by hatred?
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany chose integration over humiliation, judging specific responsibilities rather than collective identities. South Africa prioritized truth to prevent vengeance. Spain, after Franco’s dictatorship, chose an imperfect but peaceful transition. None of those paths were ideal; all avoided something worse.
Cuba has not yet had such a historical closure. Without a minimal pact that allows progress, the wound remains open. And open wounds fill with suspicion and resentment.
What we see today is not only political polarization; it is emotional polarization. The pain of exile, of family separation, of scarcity and lost opportunities is real. That pain exists on both shores.
In Cuba, there are people who experience severe economic pressure as an unjust reality and who blame Miami, the diaspora, or decisions made outside the island for a situation they feel deeply limits their lives.
Recognizing that sentiment —even if one does not share all of its conclusions— is essential. Denying it only deepens the fracture. Turning that pain into hatred condemns us to repeat ourselves.
After so many years of division, perhaps the greatest act of responsibility is to ask ourselves not only what we defended, but how we defended it —and whether that path brought us closer to or further from the country we want.
I do not defend silence or amnesia. I call for respect and for the capacity to disagree without destroying one another. Honest criticism opens paths; moral lynching closes them.
Let us move forward together in the same direction. Let us form a moral pact, an alliance that allows us to advance as one body in favor of the progress of our nation, the prosperity of every Cuban, and the decision to set aside personal hatred.
Cuba will never be prosperous if Cubans themselves are not prosperous. And prosperity also means tolerance.
I envision a Cuba capable of forging a new historical stage, not from forgetting, but from the conscious will not to repeat the cycles of punishment and resentment that have marked us. Justice and truth are indispensable. Reconciliation is as well. Without a minimum ethic of mutual recognition, there can be no nation.
We are still in time to do things differently. It requires leadership, temperance, and the conscious will not to resemble those we claim we wish to overcome.
