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Situations of waiting: the dead-ends of the national Cuban imagination, yesterday and today Since the 18th century, the precariousness of the imaginary construction of the Cuban nation has led to seeking pragmatic solutions, founded on an order vision, necessary to progress’advance. During the entire 19th century, and then under the republican period (1902-1958), this pragmatism translated itself into the awaiting of more propitious conditions to the national blooming. Scorning on doubts of national identity, Fidel Castro started a totalitarian turn at the 1959 revolution to impose order, progress and equality in a radical way. As he had also the urge to « forge» the nation, waiting for tomorrow became once more the central dimension of political imaginary. Today, facing the wreck of the revolutionary project, the Cuban population is waiting for Castro’s death without really knowing what to expect from it, and that really shows a disorded national imaginary.