By Eloy Viera Cañive (El Toque)
HAVANA TIMES – #MiraSiMeErizo (Look and see if I get goosebumps) is the latest challenge on Cuban social media. Its origin is linked to the statements of some residents of Rio Cauto after the visit of Miguel Diaz-Canel to that locality in January 2024.
The verb “erizar” means “to raise, make something stiff, especially hair” and is associated with situations of intense emotion or cold. It is also used to describe events that provoke intense or stirring reactions.
The act of getting goosebumps in front of the cameras on Cuban television is not new and has been a fundamental narrative element of propaganda in Cuba. One of the people who made statements in Rio Cauto claimed they had goosebumps when, upon seeing Diaz-Canel, they remembered “God Fidel.” Who wouldn’t get goosebumps at such a memory?
The use of political eccentricity and the goosebumps it provokes has been an eternal part of the totalitarian way of doing politics in Cuba. It implies deifying officials and preventing people from publicly getting excited about anyone who represents opposition to the Castro regime that Diaz-Canel embodies today.
Such is essential for a system that cannot demonstrate its legitimacy through common democratic mechanisms that exist elsewhere and needs to show that, at least, it retains the ability to move “emotions.”
But the crucial issue does not lie in whether people get goosebumps in front of a deflated figure like Diaz-Canel, who reached where he is not by the will of the citizens, but because a handful of ninety+ year olds decided so and still have to accompany him to show support. Each individual has the right to get goosebumps with what they understand. The conflict in Cuba lies in the authenticity of the reactions
