“No quiero irme, pero tengo que irme.” This phrase, filled with guilt, fear, and love for her people, encapsulates the video that the young Cuban painter Maibis Guerra posted on Instagram while finishing a painting under pressure, just days before leaving Cuba. It was not just a work of art; it represents her farewell.
In the video, Maibis confesses what many emigrants feel but few manage to express out loud. The sadness of leaving even though they don't want to go, the lump in their throat when thinking of their parents, the coffee made by dad, the rice and beans cooked by mom, the everyday sounds of the Island left behind. Painting has become her way of resisting the heartbreak.
The challenge for her was to finish the painting in five days so she could take it in her suitcase. “I need to take a memory of my people with me and pour everything I feel out of my soul,” she says while throwing paint onto the canvas, amidst tears, doubts, and silences that weigh more than words.
The work ended up being titled Tears of Blood, a self-portrait influenced by migration, family, and the pain of goodbye.
In the process, her family began leaving written messages directly on the canvas. Each word, each signature, each stroke transformed the painting into something unique. “This is my home,” insists Maibis, even knowing that her future is far from there. “My heart stays here.”
The reaction on social media was immediate and widespread. Cubans both inside and outside the Island saw themselves in that story as if the narrative belonged to them as well.
"It's not a painting, it's a national sentiment," wrote a user. Another confessed to having cried without being able to write anything else. Many emigrants spoke from experience, of the pain that comes, of the heavy nostalgia, but also of the strength that is built over time.
Even people from other countries joined the emotional chorus. Venezuelans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans commented that they felt reflected in a wound that knows no borders. “Thank you for painting and expressing what we all feel,” summarized one of the most shared messages.
Amid wishes of good luck, sincere warnings, and words of comfort, an uncomfortable truth also emerged: no one leaves because they want to. “Never forget who is responsible for you having to leave your country and your family behind,” wrote another user, voicing the underlying sentiment that many prefer to remain silent about.
At the end of the video, Maibis appears ready to leave. The picture is complete. The farewell too. “If you’re watching this, it’s because I managed to finish it. I’m probably leaving Cuba right now,” she says before asking for something simple and profoundly Cuban: “Asere, wish me luck.”
Her work doesn't just travel in a suitcase. It travels in the collective memory of a country marked by emigration, where every goodbye feels too much like the last one, and where art, at times, is the only way to avoid breaking completely.
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