Cubans deserve, above all, freedom, peace of mind, and tranquility. They deserve to have spirituality return to their lives, and for every morning not to be about surviving just to make it through the day.
Stáhnout obrázek
Maylín Fernández Suárez was born on June 22, 1988, in Santa Clara, Cuba. She remembers her childhood and youth as happy periods, with a relatively stable economic situation thanks to her father’s work abroad. Although she was very young during the Special Period, her family experienced serious difficulties accessing food and basic resources at that time. In Cuba, she worked as a professional judge at the Provincial Court of Villa Clara, specializing in Family and Civil Law. She notes that judicial independence is nonexistent, although her area of practice allowed her for a time to work under less direct pressure. Beginning in 2014, she started to experience increasing surveillance and control that went beyond the professional sphere. The lack of freedom and constant pressure led her to emigrate. She describes life outside Cuba as a profound and demanding change, marked by adaptation, employment challenges, and the need to reinvent herself. On a personal level, she regrets that her son, who was born outside the island, cannot maintain ties with her family in Cuba. Maylín expresses deep pain over the country’s current situation, which she describes as collapsed and marked by repression and hopelessness. She dreams of a Cuba based on freedom, respect for differences, and the possibility of living with dignity, and calls on Cubans, both on the island and abroad, not to resign themselves and to continue fighting for change. This interview was conducted as part of the project Memory of Our Cuban Neighbors, in Madrid, 2025.