Reimagining Prevention: Youth, Masculinity, and the Quiet Work of Cultural Change in Cuba

There is a particular kind of work that happens before harm ever occurs—quiet, often invisible, and profoundly difficult to measure. It is the work of shifting what people believe is acceptable. It is the work of noticing what has long gone unnamed. In the field of sexual violence prevention, this is what we call primary prevention: not response, not intervention, but the delicate reshaping of the social norms and conditions that allow violence to take root.

In contemporary Cuba, that work unfolds not through a single program or policy, but through a constellation of efforts that bring together education, public health, gender policy, and cultural production. Sexual violence, in this context, is rarely treated as an isolated phenomenon. Instead, it is understood as part of a broader ecosystem of gender-based violence—one that includes psychological coercion, economic control, street harassment, and the disciplining of women’s bodies and autonomy.¹

This framing is not incidental; it is foundational. It allows prevention efforts to move upstream, to intervene not only at the point of crisis but at the level of norms—those inherited scripts about masculinity, power, and entitlement that shape behavior long before harm is caused. Before a person’s life is irrevocably impacted by violence.

One of the most compelling recent examples of this approach is the Cuban campaign EVOLUCIONA—a youth-centered, multimedia initiative designed to unsettle the cultural assumptions that normalize violence against women. Even the word EVOLUCIONA conjures the goal sought by this initiative— evolución or in English evolution. And as the concept of evolution suggests, the change represented in its efforts are slow and incremental, but also powerful and transformative.

Developed by the Centro Oscar Arnulfo Romero (OAR) in collaboration with national and international partners, EVOLUCIONA is, at its core, a campaign about recognition. It asks young people—particularly young men—to see what has been rendered ordinary: the catcall dismissed as flattery, the controlling text reframed as care, the jealousy mistaken for love.² Its intervention is deceptively simple: it makes the familiar strange. It cautiously shifts the perspective, casting light on how harmful social norms make those most affected by them feel.

Drawing on Cuban and regional research—including findings from the 2016-2017 National Survey on Gender Equality was conducted by the Centre for Population and Development Studies of the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) and the Centre for Women’s Studies of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC)—the campaign was intentionally crafted to address the social conditions and factors that sustain gender-based violence.³ Rather than focusing exclusively on extreme or criminalized acts, EVOLUCIONA centers the everyday—the micro-practices and quotidian interactions through which power is exerted and internalized. This is where its strength lies as a primary prevention strategy. It does not wait for violence to escalate. It works instead at the level of perception, language, and meaning, burrowing deep into the mindsets and ideas that allow sexual violence to take shape.

The campaign’s materials—short films, social media interventions, public performances—invite viewers into moments of dissonance but through relatable, popular mediums. In one widely circulated social experiment, men are placed in the position of being harassed on the street. Their discomfort becomes a mirror, reflecting back a normalized violence that had previously gone unquestioned.⁴ The response is not prescribed. Instead, the campaign creates space for reflection, dialogue, and—perhaps most importantly—reinterpretation.

Furthermore, EVOLUCIONA is not merely a campaign directed at youth; it is one constructed with them. Young people are positioned not as passive recipients of information but as active producers of meaning. Through partnerships with universities, artists, activists, and community networks, the campaign cultivates spaces where youth can reinterpret its messages and carry them into their own social spheres, the very places where actual change can begin to take place.⁵

This participatory model aligns closely with what preventionists identify as an effective norm-change strategy: interventions are most powerful when they are diffused through peer networks, where credibility and influence are already established. Where trust exists.

The campaign’s reach, while modest in scale, is notable in its depth. A single audiovisual piece generated tens of thousands of organic views and sparked sustained online debate.⁶ More importantly, participants reported shifts in awareness—recognizing behaviors they had previously dismissed, interrogating their own roles in perpetuating harm, and integrating these insights into their community practices. Each interaction and conversation creating new opportunities though which to probe long-held harmful beliefs and practices.

These are not easily quantifiable outcomes. They do not, as yet, appear in prevalence rates or incident reports. Yet, they are precisely the kinds of shifts that make prevention possible and meaningful. And, yes, they matter. They matter to each person who has a new-found awareness of how social norms can precipitate harm. They matter to every person whose life goes untouched by gender-based violence because the subtle shifts that have occurred in those around them have diminished the chances of it happening, reset the trajectories of influence and action, and thereby improved the outcomes they may collectively expect to achieve.

One of the most empowering aspects of EVOLUCIONA is that it does not exist in isolation. It is part of a broader, evolving infrastructure of gender-violence prevention in Cuba. In 2021, Cuba formalized its Integrated Strategy for the Prevention and Attention to Gender-Based Violence, signaling a commitment to coordinated, multisectoral action across health, education, legal, and community systems.⁷ More recent initiatives, supported by international partners such as The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), have expanded approaches, strengthened local services, and emphasized work with men.⁸

This emphasis is critical, despite being binary in nature and while we simultaneously acknowledge that men are certainly not the only ones who commit acts of sexual violence. Still, prevalence rates underscore the merits of working with men to upend harmful norms. Prevention efforts that engage men—not as perpetrators but as participants in cultural transformation—have shown promise globally. In Cuba, training programs focused on “new masculinities” aim to disrupt the rigid gender norms that underwrite violence, reaching young men across educational and professional sectors.⁹

It is important to name what we do not yet know. There is, at present, limited publicly available evidence demonstrating the causal impact of EVOLUCIONA or similar Cuban initiatives on reducing sexual violence rates. Like many primary prevention efforts—particularly those rooted in cultural change—its outcomes are diffuse, long-term, and difficult to isolate. But absence of evidence is not absence of value or merit. Unfortunately, in a culture of immediate gratification, we want end results instead of progress. What EVOLUCIONA offers is a compelling model of how prevention can be imagined: as a process of collective reflection, as an artistic and social practice, and as an invitation to see differently.

If we turn now toward the United States and our home state of New Jersey, we can envision how this model could be adopted as a platform through which to encourage communities to envision alternatives to the status quo and chart paths towards prevention-informed ways of being. Sexual violence prevention has historically leaned heavily on individual-level interventions: awareness campaigns, bystander training, risk-reduction messaging. While these approaches have yielded important gains, they often struggle to move beyond the surface—to reach the deeper cultural narratives that shape behavior and hold the potential of altering our collective futures.

What Cuba’s EVOLUCIONA campaign suggests is the power of norm-centered, youth-driven, culturally embedded prevention.

There are several lessons here worth carrying forward:

1. Center the Everyday
   Prevention efforts should intentionally address the continuum of harm—particularly forms of sexual harassment and coercive control that are often normalized. By naming these behaviors explicitly, campaigns can disrupt the conditions that allow more severe violence to occur.
2. Invest in Cultural Production
   EVOLUCIONA’s use of art, media, and storytelling is not ancillary—it is central. U.S. Prevention work could benefit from deeper partnerships with artists, creators, and youth influencers who can translate prevention messages into culturally resonant forms.
3. Position Youth as Co-Creators
   Rather than designing programs for young people, prevention efforts should be built with them. This includes not only participation but authorship—creating space for youth to reinterpret, adapt, and disseminate messages within their own communities and spheres of influence.
4. Engage Masculinities as a Site of Change
   Work with men and boys must move beyond accountability alone to include critical reflection on gender norms, power, and emotional expression. Programs that foster alternative masculinities can play a crucial role in preventing violence before it begins.
5. Embrace the Long Horizon of Prevention
   Perhaps most importantly, EVOLUCIONA reminds us that prevention is not immediate. It is iterative, cumulative, and often intangible. It requires patience—and a willingness to invest in outcomes that may not be immediately visible but are deeply transformative over time.

There is a quiet radicalism in asking people to see differently. In Cuba, efforts like EVOLUCIONA do not promise quick solutions. They do something more subtle, and perhaps more enduring: they unsettle what has been taken for granted. They invite people to question, to reimagine, to speak back to inherited norms and traditions of harm. And in that space—between recognition and refusal—prevention begins. Even though we may not readily see it. Even if its inchoate stirrings are inaudible to us. A subtle but powerful change is taking place, and as it grows—stronger, more resilient, bolder—it will transform our sense of safety, autonomy, and belonging.

Footnotes

1. UNFPA Cuba, Estrategia Integral de Prevención y Atención a la Violencia de Género y en el Escenario Familiar, 2021.
2. Centro Oscar Arnulfo Romero (OAR), Aprendizajes de la Campaña Evoluciona, 2021.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. UNFPA Cuba, 2021.
8. UNDP Cuba, “Masculinidades cómplices,” 2023; UNFPA Cuba program updates.
9. UNFPA, Country Programme documents (Cuba).

Works Cited

“Cuba.” UN Women Data Hub, data.unwomen.org/country/cuba.

Centro Oscar Arnulfo Romero (OAR). Aprendizajes de la Campaña Evoluciona. 2021.

Observatorio de Cuba sobre Igualdad de Género. Encuesta Nacional sobre Igualdad de Género (ENIG-2016).

UNDP Cuba. “Masculinidades cómplices.” 2023.

UNFPA Cuba. Estrategia Integral de Prevención y Atención a la Violencia de Género y en el Escenario Familiar. 2021.

UNFPA. Country Programme Document: Cuba. United Nations Population Fund.

Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Gender-Based Violence and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Cuba. odi.org.