The Cuban Karen Hernández Álvarez posted on Instagram a video that has sparked much conversation, where she calls on the Cuban community to "cleanse" itself of the vulgarity that, according to her, defines it today on social media, and draws a direct line between that degradation and the victory of the Revolution of 1959.
"The Cuban community in these times has been marked by total vulgarity," asserts the digital creator in the video, before claiming a different historical identity: "For many years, Cubans have been characterized by education, and Cuban women by their refinement and elegance."
For Hernández, that identity was deliberately destroyed by the regime. "Since the triumph of the revolution, little by little, they took all of that away from us. If you were elegant and educated, you were bourgeois. And that was not acceptable; it was punishable," she points out. The consequence, according to her, was a degradation passed down from generation to generation: "This continued repeating from generation to generation, behavior after behavior, until we were left with the remnants that exist now."
One of the most striking points of the video is its rejection of the sexualization of Cuban women on social media. "Cuban women have always been beautiful, elegant, and intelligent, and now they want to completely sexualize them, which I totally disagree with," says Hernández, who defends that historic image against the content that, in his opinion, degrades Cuban women on digital platforms.
Hernández makes it clear that she does not generalize. "Not all of us are the same, obviously. I am Cuban, very proud of that entrepreneurial, decent, educated part of Cuba, which still defends its roots above the vulgarity that is currently rewarded," she says. She adds that the problem is not the absence of Cubans with values, but the invisibility of that sector: "We are not few; we are many, but that type of content is not being amplified."
The final call of the video is straightforward: "If you are Cuban like me, I am only going to ask you to reflect on and support my words so that the audience watching us, who do not know what a Cuban is, understands that there are still elegant, decent, and educated Cubans."
The post relates to a very recurring debate about the image that Cubans project on social media, which has significantly impacted the representation of Cubans in various parts of the world today.
"The current Cuban community needs to cleanse itself, and if my comment offends you, you should reflect on it," asserts Karen Hernández in the video, which many followers have interpreted as the most straightforward summary of a debate that has remained unresolved for decades.
Filed under: