The Cuban influencer Anita Mateu posted on Instagram a reel in which she lists four experiences she was never able to have due to being born in Cuba: being part of a university sorority, having a locker at school, obtaining a driver's license at 18, and being a cheerleader.
The content creator, originally from Matanzas and residing in Spain, built the video based on what she saw in American movies, although she acknowledged that reality can differ from fiction.
The most striking contrast in the video is the one drawn between the dream of university brotherhood and the actual experience in Cuba: "I was on a scholarship at the university with a clogged bathroom for a year, with showers that didn't work, sleeping on iron bunk beds, that was my experience of brotherhood."
Regarding school lockers, which are so prominent in youth series, Anita confessed that she found the idea of having her own space with photos of her friends between classes to be "super cool," something that never existed during her school years on the island.
The driver's license was another point of reflection: at 30 years old and still learning to drive in Spain, he lamented that being born in Cuba had prevented him from gaining that independence from a young age.
The fourth point was the most emotional: his frustrated artistic vocation. "I needed to dance, sing, act, to be part of that, and maybe for Broadway to discover me. I was very artistic; I was born in the wrong country," he stated.
The video sparked an active debate in the comments. Many Latin American followers from Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Chile pointed out that brotherhoods, cheerleading, and ticket sales are phenomena unique to the United States, not to Latin America in general.
But other Cubans fully identified with the sentiment. "I feel that Cuba stole things from my adolescence. I'm still recovering them, even though I'm approaching 30," wrote a follower. Another was more straightforward: "Cuba held us back in everything, which is why it's said that when a Cuban leaves Cuba, they are reborn."
A comment from Boston provided a different perspective: "You were born in the right country; the unfortunate part is that you were born into the wrong economic, political, and social system."
Some followers added their own lament: "In Cuba, the closest thing to cheerleaders were the gymnastic beams."
Anita, who obtained Spanish nationality in April, purchased her first home in Galicia at the end of 2025 and has nearly 500,000 subscribers on YouTube.
In March of this year, after returning to Cuba and documenting the deterioration of Havana, the influencer stated that the main problem on the island is its government, which she described as a dictatorship and inefficient.
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