The Cuban writer and editor Pablo de Cuba Soria stated in an interview for CiberCuba that Cubans who emigrate show a remarkable ability to reinvent themselves.
"The Cuban resets. The Cuban who is going to hear the story will hear the story anywhere, but many Cubans reset and adapt precisely to one way of life. In other words, they learn to fend for themselves and open up paths," she assured.
The reflection arose within the framework of the debate on the new Cuban Housing Law project, published by the National Assembly of People's Power, which expands the State's authority to intervene, control, and recover private properties, including the possibility of declaring the loss of property rights due to abandonment.
Pablo from Cuba distinguished between those who will continue to be dependent on the system—"those who will hear the story anywhere"—and the majority of emigrants, who, according to him, have already empirically demonstrated that capacity for adaptation, not only in the United States but in any destination around the world.
The writer acknowledged the existence of a deep wound: "Without a doubt, there is a cultural ruin that takes its time." However, he expressed cautious optimism by stating that this cultural and material ruin could be reversed simultaneously once the system changes, and that the process "shouldn't take as long" as some fear.
To contextualize the origin of that ruin, Pablo de Cuba used a striking image: "They cannot build a house, but they continue to expand the ceiling downwards and downwards. It is a great, let’s say, infernal building that keeps being constructed." The metaphor directly points to the paradox of the regime: incapable of generating, but tireless in destroying and controlling.
That paradox is supported by concrete figures.
Cuba has accumulated a deficit of more than 805,000 homes according to official data from 2025, having completed only 22% of its construction plan that year and recorded a 54% decline in construction in 2024. Nonetheless, the regime responds with a law consisting of approximately 190 chapters to legislate on what has already been destroyed.
Regarding that legislation, Pablo from Cuba was direct: "It is more totalitarian state control over the same ruin that the state itself, that the same dictatorship produced."
The writer also pointed out the underlying political contradiction: "I promote policies for nearly seven decades that lead people to emigrate in masses, but I will control them anyway." This criticism targets the core of the totalitarian system: expelling its own population and then legislating on the assets they leave behind.
The thesis of the "reset" gains traction in the context of the massive Cuban emigration in recent years, which has led hundreds of thousands of Cubans to Spain, Uruguay, Mexico, and other destinations, where stories of professional reinvention confirm the pattern described by the writer.
Pablo from Cuba, founder of Casa Vacía, an independent publishing house dedicated to Cuban and Latin American literature, concluded with a vision that, despite acknowledging the extent of the accumulated damage, does not give up on the possibility of recovery: “The cultural ruin in some way goes in reverse to everything I believe.”
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