[News] What They Didn’t Anticipate: Our Animalization

[Anti-Imperialist News]

resumen-english.org
<https://resumen-english.org/2026/08/cuba-what-they-didnt-anticipate-our-animalization/>
What They Didn’t Anticipate: Our Animalization
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By Laidi Fernandez de Juan on August 6, 2026

Amid this chaotic situation we’re living through—where survival is
paramount, and resilience, resourcefulness, and a resigned acceptance of
the inevitable prevail—we’re gradually acquiring qualities we never
imagined. Those who push us to the limit, impose cruel restrictions on us,
and force us into a permanent state of vigilance that wears down our
central nervous system—that is, our entire body—failed to calculate the
intrinsic nature of the Cuban people: *the stubborn strength to invent, to
stay afloat, to transform mechanisms and things that were previously
unimaginable.* This kind of resilience isn’t found in any manual. It’s
something we’ve gradually acquired over many years of deprivation and the
resulting workarounds.

I’m not going to compare one period with another—this crisis with the
previous one—or talk about how much we’ve sacrificed, because that would
undermine the current sense of urgency in the face of the precariousness of
our existence.

If half a year ago it seemed unimaginable to us to be without basic
services for 4 or 6 hours a day (water supply, essential electricity,
cooking gas, digital or landline telephone service), we have now reached
the point where we have access to these services for barely an hour each
day—which forces us into a gradual return to a more animal-like existence,
requiring skills we never planned for or even imagined possible.

This does not in the least mean that we are pleased with or willingly
accept these changes—quite the opposite. Everyone’s nerves are on edge, raw
and frayed, with a tremendous irritation that explains why we fight like
beasts over a piece of bread, the right of way, or a simple bucket of
water. Among other reasons, because nothing is simple or dispensable.

We all need water, food, electricity, gas, and medicine at any cost, even
if that entails the gradual descent into animal-like behavior I’m referring
to. There are many examples; I’ll limit myself to just a few.

Although it defies the laws of human physiology, we’ve already developed a
certain kind of night vision, as if we were cats or bats. Having lived in
semi-darkness for the past six months, in the early morning we can make out
the silhouettes of the dining room table, identify the living room armchair
and the nightstand without stumbling. Our hearing has acquired new
capabilities, also unimaginable before this war we wage day after day.
We’re no longer startled by the fluttering of a stray butterfly that can’t
find a window to escape through.

Those striking tataguas—or witch butterflies—that sometimes sneak into our
homes wander about without us swatting them away with a broom, as we used
to. They no longer frighten us, nor do we believe they portend bad omens.
We already have enough of those.

Mice gnaw at the corners of the rooms and the edges of the baseboards
without us paying them much attention. Not only because we’re exhausted
after fighting battles all day, but also because, on our new scale of
values, sensing (hearing or seeing) rodents or flying creatures is of no
consequence.

Chicken eggs explode due to the intense heat and lack of refrigeration. I
can attest to the noise they make when they burst, but we already know that
it’s not a bomb that’s gone off in the kitchen, but an egg, and although
it’s a misfortune, it’s not the end of the world. At least not the world we
inhabit right now.

As if we were crocodiles, we bleed very little, if at all. The other day,
an extremely heavy flashlight fell on one of my eyebrows. Under normal
circumstances, blood would have gushed from the injured brow ridge, but not
now. As if the body, the platelets, and the physiological cascade of
coagulation understood that there are no suture threads or needles, no
disinfectants, no cotton, no gauze, and no light at the clinic, the
forehead, the eyebrows, and the entire face hold back, and not even a bump
bears witness to the trauma. We are reptiles, cats, bats.

Like wise elephants, like gentle dolphins, like multicolored butterflies,
we’re coming to accept a new way of life—one that’s constantly changing,
too.

It may happen that the blessed hour of electricity arrives in the middle of
the night. In a state of constant wakefulness, we don’t even make a sound.
Every member of the family leaps out of bed with the speed of a cheetah
because we know that in a matter of minutes we have to charge the few
devices we have—our cell phones, our fans—as well as do the laundry, cook,
clean, and maybe even iron, even if it’s 3 a.m. *We look like anxious mice
doing everything at once, in a frenzy.* Then, like sleepy koalas, we spend
the rest of the day, only to regain the tactile sensitivity of a mole when
darkness (both metaphorical and real) falls.

I’m convinced that our oppressors didn’t anticipate that these unusual and
unnatural adaptations would enable us to survive. The vast majority of us
now belong to the so-called “ordinary Cubans,” and we go to the market as
if we were members of a flock of ducks, geese, or ants—in silent single
file to procure food, dragging wheeled carts or wooden boxes adapted for
that purpose.

No matter how harsh, difficult, cumbersome, and suffocating our corrosive
daily life may be, no matter how much we’ve been reduced to animals, and no
matter how distant hope may seem, *we will not let ourselves be defeated.*

Because our conviction as an unbeatable people—to put it bluntly—compels us
to know that no matter how bleak the outlook may be (and it certainly is),
the sun—whatever form it may take—will rise every morning, every day. Even
if it’s just to tell the dolphin, the rabbit, the cat, or the crocodile who
we are: “Good morning, here I am.”

Source: Cubadebate
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2026/08/05/lo-que-no-calcularon-nuestra-animalizacion/>,
translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English
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