The Cuban writer José Manuel Fernández Pequeño has stated in an interview with Tania Costa that the Cuban regime refuses to acknowledge a reality that is already undeniable: "Cuba has become a transcultural country, and Cuban culture has ceased to have a single center on the island to spread across multiple hubs around the world."
Fernández Pequeño, a storyteller, essayist, and professor born in Bayamo, with around twenty published books and founder of the Casa del Caribe, stated clearly in an interview with CiberCuba, "Cuban culture no longer has its center on the island. Now it has many centers in many places around the world."
The writer, who currently resides in Miami after having lived 18 years in the Dominican Republic, draws a direct parallel between the educational and cultural systems built by the 'Revolution.'
"No one can deny that the Cuban government, once it took power, filled Cuba with schools," he points out, but immediately clarifies the real purpose: "First to enforce a single type of education and second to impose an indoctrination from which no one could escape."
His diagnosis of culture is identical: "The same has happened with culture."
Fernández Pequeño recalls that when he arrived in the Dominican Republic, Dominican intellectuals would ask him how a system with so many institutions, publications, and awards could be so bad compared to theirs.
"There has never been in Cuba so many cultural institutions, so many literary awards, so many art and literature magazines. There has never been," he acknowledges, but then adds the key point of the argument: "It's not just about how much you give, but what the content of what you give is."
The writer warns about what will happen when that system disappears. "The day the Cuban system ceases to exist, that entire cultural system will come crashing down."
And he anticipates a reaction that he considers dangerous: that there are people— including intellectuals who remain on the island—who will miss him because he published their books, awarded them, and gave them trips abroad.
"Of course, you were a slave, you were a wage earner in a system," says Fernández Pequeño about those who benefited from that cultural framework. "That lasts until you say no, I do not agree. At that moment, it is over."
The writer notes that this potential nostalgia represents a real risk for any transition process, comparable to what might arise around free public healthcare if it is not maintained.
In light of this scenario, Fernández Pequeño emphasizes the reality of a Cuban culture that already exists beyond the island's borders: "There are artists, there are writers, there are Cuban intellectuals practically all over the world, and in some places, many, like in the United States and in Spain."
That dispersion, which the regime refuses to accept, is a fait accompli for them. “One thing the Cuban government refuses to accept is that we are a transcultural country.”
The mass emigration of Cubans, accelerated since 2021 and 2022, has deepened this geographical dispersion, making it one of the most significant intellectual and artistic diasporas on the continent, with new destinations that include Spain, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Chile, in addition to the historic community in the United States.
Fernández Pequeño, who won the José Ramón López Annual Short Story Prize in 2013 in the Dominican Republic, personally embodies the transnational trajectory he describes. He trained in Cuba, worked for years at the Casa del Caribe in Santiago, then resided in Santo Domingo, and finally in Miami, from where he continues to write and reflect on his country.
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