In Cuba, masculinity is a journey fraught with tensions between tradition and change, privileges and demands for redress. It is experienced as a fragmented mirror. The figure of the strong, provider, and conqueror “macho” still resonates in the streets, but in homes, classrooms, and public spaces, voices are emerging that question this legacy and seek to redefine what it means to be a man in the 21st century.
Cuba has undergone significant transformations since the 1959 Revolution, which promoted gender equality as one of its pillars. Masculinity is now a field of symbolic and political dispute. It is about freeing people from mandates that generate violence, disease, and inequality.
The challenge is to construct diverse, responsible, and caring masculinities capable of coexisting in a world where equality is no longer an option but a historical necessity. Masculinities on the island have been marked by a patriarchal culture that, despite advances, continues to influence gender relations.
In today's Cuban society, the “superman” model remains deeply rooted in popular culture, despite academic, media, and community discourses that seek to dismantle stereotypes and make way for more diverse and equitable masculinities. Machismo is still a reality and has established a hegemonic masculinity.
Despite legal advances in gender equality and educational campaigns promoted by institutions and social organizations such as the Ibero-American and African Network of Masculinities, it is clear that equality before the law does not always translate into everyday life. Many men still perceive domestic co-responsibility as a loss, and physical violence appears as a reaction to the loss of privileges.
Popular culture, with its music, baseball, and humor, has for decades reinforced an ideal of virility that rewards toughness and punishes vulnerability. However, social reality shows cracks in this model. Cuban men today face challenges ranging from economic insecurity to the need to share domestic and caregiving responsibilities, in a country where women have conquered decisive spaces in public life.
The word masculinity is not a type of gender, a word; it is something more comprehensive that is too big for many who boast about their qualities. It is about values, virtues, and attitudes in situations that test society daily, which does not want to reap an attractive physique in the eyes of humanity. On the contrary, it is about building “gender,” but more than that, it is about sensitivity, humanism, and respect.
Researchers such as Julio César González Pagés, Doctor of Historical Sciences at the University of Havana, have pointed out that cultural change requires more than norms; it involves transforming everyday practices, power relations, and forms of socialization that continue to naturalize male superiority.
In a country marked by an aging population and economic inequalities, masculinity is also expressed in health: Cuban men die earlier than women, partly because they resist taking care of themselves or acknowledging their vulnerability, reflecting how the mandates of toughness and self-sufficiency directly impact their well-being.
At the same time, new generations of young people are questioning inherited patterns and opening up to emotional expression and active fatherhood, although they face cultural and social resistance. Expectations associated with the male gender can hinder healthy and equitable relationships, causing unequal power dynamics in romantic and family interactions.
In neighborhoods, universities, and community projects, initiatives promoting egalitarian and diverse knowledge and ideas are multiplying, demonstrating that transformation is possible. Masculinity, rather than a closed concept, is today a narrative in construction, a narrative that oscillates between the persistent shadow and the hope of a new man, capable of reconciling himself with his fragility and sharing, on equal terms, everyday life.