The Cuban actress Livia Brito confessed that she made the conscious decision to eliminate her Cuban accent during her adolescence in Mexico, after enduring constant teasing in high school because of the way she spoke.
In an interview with Mexican host Yordi Rosado, Brito shared the challenges of arriving as "the Cuban girl" at a Mexican school and facing vocabulary differences that led to embarrassing situations without her realizing it.
One of the episodes he recalled in the most detail was when he told a friend, "Come on, let's fight."
In Cuba, the expression means to fight; in Mexico, it carries romantic connotations. The misunderstanding sparked a wave of teasing that became the pattern of his school life.
«I was bullied to death because fighting here is like fighting and there’s a lot of joking around and I don’t know what else, right? And in Cuba, fighting means to fight,» explained the actress, who was born in Ciego de Ávila on July 21, 1986, and emigrated to Mexico in 2000 when she was about 13 years old.
The situation affected her deeply. "I cried to avoid going. I told my parents that I didn't want to go," she recalled.
Brito also clarified that his difficulties in relating to others were not due to a distant attitude, but rather to his introverted personality: "I have always found it hard to socialize. I'm not a very sociable person."
It was in that context of suffering that she made a decision that would define her life: “No one is going to know that I am Cuban if I don’t say so”. And she kept her word.
"I have to change this because I don't want to be treated badly anymore just because I'm not from here," she explained about the decision that led her to completely neutralize her accent even before receiving formal acting training.
The process was so effective that, years later, when he entered the Centro de Educación Artística (CEA) de Televisa, his own teachers were unaware of his background. "They would ask me... Come on, that thing you just told me, say it in Cuban," he recalled, describing his teachers' surprise upon discovering his nationality.
Yordi Rosado himself, who has known her for years, confirmed it during the conversation: "I’ve never heard you speak with a Cuban tone in my life."
Brito described the process as a stage of "too much crying, too much suffering, too much reluctance to go to school," although she acknowledged that the same pain drove her to focus on her studies with extreme dedication.
Today, at 40 years old, Livia Brito is one of the most recognized Cuban actresses on Mexican television, starring in telenovelas such as La desalmada, Mujer de nadie, and Minas de pasión, all productions by TelevisaUnivision.
Her story in Mexico began with her family: her father, the Cuban actor Rolando Brito, opened the restaurant "La Cubana" in Mexico City, where Livia worked as a waitress before paving her way into acting.
The interview with Yordi Rosado, published in March 2023, has gathered hundreds of thousands of views on social media and has renewed public interest in the personal story of the actress, who kept silent for decades about the price she paid to fit in.
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