The Price of Silence: When Violence Happens “At Home”

Violence never gives warning before it strikes: it hides in the silence we’ve learned to call normality.

That night, the neighbors heard the argument again. The sound of breaking objects, a woman’s screams, a child’s crying. Those sounds were already familiar to them. Only this time, the ambulance arrived —and so did the police. By dawn, the door was sealed shut, and a woman never came out again. No one wanted to believe that this man, who “seemed so normal,” was capable of something like that. But violence never gives warning before it strikes: it hides in the silence we’ve learned to call normality.

This is not a story from a distant country. In recent months, social media has brought to light gender-based violent deaths of women, and a significant portion of those tragedies occurred right here in this country. According to records from the Gender Equality Observatory, part of Cuba’s National Office of Statistics and Information, the province of Las Tunas has for several years maintained a rate higher than the national average for incidents related to gender-based violence. These are not just cold numbers: every decimal point represents a person who was once alive.

Today, Las Tunas faces an unavoidable issue: when an intimate relationship becomes a place of danger, when the home ceases to be a refuge, what do we do as a society? This is not a private matter to be resolved behind closed doors. It is a collective problem that strikes at the very fabric of the community and demands responses that go far beyond momentary outrage.

The price of silence is high. In several cases in the province, there was a long period of time between the first episode of violence and the fatal outcome: neighbors who heard something, family members who suspected something, and even people who tried to intervene. However, the absence of systematic early-warning mechanisms and sufficient institutional support prevented those warning signs from averting the worst. The data clearly show that in the vast majority of these cases, the victims are women and the perpetrators are the people closest to them: husbands, ex-partners, and partners.

It is even more disturbing that Las Tunas shows an “atypical” trend in gender-based violence indicators. While national data fluctuates in some areas, our province’s figures have shown an increase in certain years that should set off all the alarms. This means that, in this land we share, there are people facing a disproportionate risk. It could be anyone: your neighbor, your coworker, that quiet woman you pass in the market.

Why is it so hard to talk about this? Because deep within our culture, a stubborn notion persists: family matters are resolved within the family. “No one should meddle between husband and wife,” goes the saying, and that saying lives on in the subconscious of many. But that very notion is the breeding ground where violence thrives. Failure to act is, in itself, a way of legitimizing violence. When institutions fail to speak out in time, when a neighbor looks the other way, when the community prefers not to get involved, we are unwittingly telling the abuser: you can keep going.

And there is a deeper problem: do the existing legal framework and social services truly protect women at risk? The answer is not optimistic. Cuba has not yet established femicide as a distinct offense in the Penal Code, which makes it difficult to independently assess gender-based motives in the classification and sentencing of such crimes. At the same time, shelters and emergency support systems for victims remain insufficient. When a woman flees in the early hours of the morning with her children, where does she go? Who does she call? That question still lacks a reassuring answer.

The solution cannot depend on a single actor, even though several national initiatives here are seeking to change the reality. We need a community protection network, a public willing to intervene and provide support, a justice system that identifies and punishes violence for what it is, and social services that support those who decide to break the cycle. Every person —the neighbor, the coworker, the police officer, the judge, the family doctor— must play an active role in that network.

Violence does not disappear simply because we avoid it. It only begins to lose its hiding places when we look it in the face. In Las Tunas, in Cuba, in this society that is still worth defending, the safety of every person must be a non-negotiable boundary. This is not just a women’s issue: it is a decision about the world in which we want to live.