From his apartment balcony Cuban athlete Javier Martin Gutierrez, known as “Spiderman” criticized life in today’s Cuba.

By Francisco Acevedo

HAVANA TIMES – Cuban athlete Javier Martin Gutierrez, known as “Spiderman” and a former champion of the Cuban Fighters League (mixed martial arts), released a letter in recent hours from the maximum-security Combinado del Este prison, where he is serving a sentence for expressing his dissatisfaction with the situation in Cuba.

His crime was shouting from the balcony of his home about the many miseries we endure every day, but when the video went viral, the regime took action and put him behind bars for alleged public disorder.

Beyond the former athlete’s current situation, which is also shared by hundreds of Cubans imprisoned under similarly trivial pretexts designed to avoid recognizing them as political prisoners, I want to examine the phenomenon of catharsis—of exploding when you get the chance, of letting out what you have been carrying inside, in our case for decades, even if it serves no purpose other than expanding your lungs and filling you with adrenaline.

Those internal explosions sound like a magic remedy, an ancient cure for our deepest afflictions. They are basically a glorious moment: the eruption of that inner volcano you have kept bottled up for years, like someone keeping old, smelly clothes in the closet because “they might come in handy someday.” Spoiler: they won’t, but there they are.

Imagine this: you’ve spent years accumulating frustrations, grudges, annoyances, and enough drama to fill a seemingly never-ending Brazilian soap opera in the purest O Globo style.

You say nothing. You’re strong. You suppress every urge to scream, cry, kick the couch, or tell your boss, your ex, your neighbor, or the government (the classic emotional punching bag) to go to hell. But there comes a moment when your body tells you, “Enough,” and bam, you explode.

It doesn’t matter whether it comes out as tears, screams, an inner monologue, or simply a cosmic sigh. What matters is that you get out what you’ve been carrying inside, that emotional magma that has been boiling beneath the surface.

You’ve endured internal insults, absurd reproaches, social and workplace disappointments, and even those times when people forgot your birthday or ate your last slice of pizza without asking. It all piles up, because whatever you don’t let out today turns into what science ought to call a “resentment bomb.” And when someone gives you the key to open the chest, you unleash that torrent with all the grace and subtlety of a tropical hurricane.

What’s interesting about this explosion is not that it magically solves your problems—that would be asking too much—but that it makes you feel alive. It’s like running a marathon and reaching the finish line exhausted, your lungs about to burst, but with your adrenaline through the roof and a silly smile of satisfaction on your face.

That physical and emotional release, although useless for changing reality, expands your lungs, oxygenates your soul, and reminds you that yes, you are still there, breathing and resisting.

And what about the sarcastic humor that usually accompanies these outbursts? Because, of course, nobody wants to emerge from one an emotional wreck without at least being able to laugh a little at the everyday tragedy.

Life, however, is absurd, and our catharsis is an act of rebellion against that absurdity, a way of shouting, “You’re not going to crush me, Diaz-Canel!” while blurting out, “What the hell is going on here?” (so as not to use a stronger word). That dark humor, that irony, is the perfect seasoning for digesting that emotional vomit that has been held in for so long.

In literature, catharsis is one of the jewels of storytelling. Aristotle described it as the purging of emotions, the process through which the spectator of a tragedy is freed from their own repressed feelings.

In our daily lives, catharsis works the same way. Whether it comes through screaming in traffic, a bout of uncontrollable crying in front of the mirror, a huge argument, or the confession of secrets that have been kept under lock and key, we are reenacting that ancient ritual of emotional cleansing.

But here’s the funny part (or the tragic part, depending on how you look at it): catharsis has no practical purpose beyond filling you with adrenaline and making you feel, for a moment, as though you rule the world—or at least your own little inner kingdom—because it doesn’t repair relationships or turn bad decisions into valuable lessons.

Nobody teaches us how to deal with the damn stress or the grudges we carry in our souls, so we keep them buried there, beneath layer upon layer of unanswered emails, unbearable meetings, and miles of walking because there is no transportation. And what happens when the opportunity finally comes? BOOM! You explode as if you had been a pressure cooker since the 1980s.

Let’s be honest: the phenomenon of catharsis is like one of those sneezes you feel coming for what seems like a thousand years before it finally explodes in a glorious and liberating ACHOO! Except in this case, the explosion doesn’t clear your nasal passages but your emotional lungs, and although it changes nothing in the universe, it leaves you with the incredible feeling that you did something. Something important. And above all, something outrageously human.

And although sometimes it may seem useless, it actually serves an important purpose: reminding us that we are human and that, no matter how tough we try to be, we need to explode every once in a while in order to keep going.

Because who can endure year after year without even letting loose a decent curse word, wherever they may live? In Cuba’s case, who can contain decades of dissatisfaction without losing their mind?

Even though catharsis doesn’t change the world or fix the chaos we carry inside, it does accomplish something fundamental: it allows us to take a deep breath, pull ourselves together, and continue pretending that we have everything under control.

That’s why it’s important to let it out—to scream, cry, laugh sarcastically, or write an ode to emotional stupidity—because even if all it does is expand your lungs and fill you with adrenaline, that momentary catharsis is the heroic act of telling yourself that, despite everything, you’re still here, fighting and breathing. And that, my friend, is already an epic triumph worthy of being celebrated with a good shout into the wind.

We are still waiting for that collective catharsis, that social phenomenon in which all of Cuba lets out its frustrations simultaneously, like at a soccer match or a post-COVID family gathering. For now, we’ll have to make do with Spiderman.

Read more from Cuba here at Havana Times.