Now, I know it’s for good. Things won’t get fixed in Cuba for as long as I’m alive. I’m going to work, work a lot, maybe make it back to visit the family I left and, finally, I’ll die in foreign lands.

The experienced professor, who could have given a lot more to Cuban university, talks to me calmly, without any drama. However, in every one of his words you can feel the overflowing anguish, that led him to take physical distance from the island he loved so much.

Days later, I had a conversation with another friend, a young man, and who had the same angst. He left with his closest relatives at home; but he’s afraid for those that stayed behind. I won’t rest until I get them all out of there, he said.

From my neighborhood, the people who aren’t waiting for humanitarian parole from the US, are digging up grandparents, great-grandparents and even great-great-grandparents to find a branch of the family tree that allows them to access Spain’s Grandchildren Law – that grants them Spanish citizenship. Or looking for the cheapest trafficking option that will take them to Nicaragua at least, or to Mexico with a bit of luck to fight for a way to get to the US.

A young woman sold everything she had and went with her four-year-old son; and she had the scare of her life along the way when her young child almost drowned. The story had a happy ending. We know that, in lots of cases, death is the price for escape. For millions of Cubans, without anyone to claim them, without any Spanish relatives in their DNA, without anything to sell or a job that will allow them to eat decently, the horizon narrows their joy down to the electricity coming back on after long blackouts drinking water coming back down dry pipes, a couple of pounds of rationed rice being sold or acidic bread fom the ration store not coming in so late every day. Some days, it doesn’t come in at all. 

Meanwhile, not even with two tons of make-up, rehearsing his words over and over again, pre-recording and editing his answers and trying to put on a show of spontaneity, can the President string empathetic ideas together for their people. This new head of the Communist Party who has taken on a surname that will go down in History – singao (asshole) – says that “it’s in the hands of the US Government to change the structural causes of Cuban emigration” (Granma newspaper).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Listening to the leader and his laughable nonsense – who you can guess is being used as a puppet by the geriatric military leadership – wouldn’t be a big deal honestly if the country wasn’t turning into a great ruin every day and it’s his face that has to give a response because of the hierarchical seat he occupies by name.

But I think the most alarming thing is that despair is the main plot of every story, of every rupture. People who are looking nowhere, who dream of a Madagascar that doesn’t appear and with zero expectations about what they can give their children – beyond the “finding a way to leave.”

In fact, people aren’t even expecting Cuban sports delegations – a source of national pride in the past – to win medals, now they’re waiting for news about which athlete or trainer managed to dodge surveillance and take the jump across the pond. If the good news includes details about the adventure the reckless undertook, then even better. 

“How are we going to say “this is our Homeland”, when we have nothing of it? “My Homeland,” but my Homeland gives me nothing, it doesn’t sustain me, I’m dying of hunger in my Homeand. This isn’t a Homeland! It might be for a few Cubans, but it won’t be the Homeland of the Cuban people (…). Homeland doesn’t only mean to say a place where you can shout, walk and talk without being killed; Homeland is a place where you can live; Homeland is a place where you can work and earn a decent living and also earn what is fair for your work (…). Not having a Homeland is precisely the tragedy that has befallen our people. (…) The best piece of evidence to prove we don’t have a Homeland are the tens of thousands who leave Cuba for another country so they can live (…). Not everyone who wants to leave leaves, only those who can.”

The previous paragraph – which would cost a dissident years in prison if they shouted this – belongs to a speech by Fidel Castro, the glorious Comandante gave in a park in Camaguey, on January 4th 1959. 

Sixty years later, picking up on the exact destruction he caused, we’re splashing around in the same putrefied water, with the additional problem of seeing those who were going to be our liberators becoming owners of the iron throne.

Jose Marti, who was too honest and poetic to survive as a politician, was sure that he would die “without a Homeland, but without an owner.” Aside from the distance, we are suffering the same hardships. Without a Homeland; and thinking about how to face or flee (most of the time) from the hopeless owner. What a shitty fate, no?

This article was translated into English from the original in Spanish.