By Alberto Reyes Pías
I’ve been thinking about what must change
Cuba is a country in ruins. Over these nearly 70 years, the deterioration has spread everywhere: the houses, the roads, the services, the institutions, the people…
We are a country that must be rebuilt from the foundations up. For that to happen, a change in the political system and a change in the social structure are essential.
However, although changing the structures is necessary, it is not enough.
A country can transform its laws, institutions, and political system, but it will not achieve real change unless it heals the hearts of its people, because structural changes do not make wounds accumulated over decades disappear.
Throughout all these years, we have hurt one another deeply. We have attacked one another, spied on one another, and informed on one another. Our children have been sent to absurd wars, where they have died. They have forced our children to serve in the military, where many have suffered abuse and others have died. They have required generations of young people to attend boarding schools as a condition for studying at university, tearing them away from their families at an early age. They have indoctrinated our children, harassed them because of their faith, and persecuted and imprisoned those who have raised a different voice.
Our people are buried beneath material ruins, but even more deeply beneath our wounds, our resentments, and our pent-up anger.
If we do not heal our hearts, we risk reproducing tomorrow what we reject today and mistaking justice for revenge. Justice will be necessary, but so will forgiveness.
Forgiving does not mean forgetting, justifying what cannot be justified, or giving up on the justice that must be done. Forgiving means refusing to let the harm we have suffered poison our souls and determine how we relate to others. A society that does not learn to forgive may remain imprisoned by its wounds forever.
Rebuilding our country does not consist only of putting up buildings, repairing roads, or changing institutions. It also means learning to see one another as brothers and sisters after so many years of division.
A long time ago, a young man told me, “I have written down the names and surnames of everyone who will have to pay for what they did to me.”
I think it would be a good idea for each of us to make our own list, forgetting no one and leaving out none of those who have hurt us. Then, from the calm of the present, and with the barriers that today prevent revenge, we can begin to forgive, one by one, all those who have harmed us or those we love. And if it is too painful, we should seek the help we need now—but we must not give up on doing it.
Because the true rebuilding of a country that has been buried in hatred and division begins when we stop focusing on pain and anger and start asking ourselves what we can do to free our hearts from resentment, so that our children never inherit our wounds.