“Asere, ¿qué bolá?”, this Cuban street greeting, was already in common use in Havana’s working-class neighborhoods long before a U.S. president adopted it as well. On Saturday, March 19, 2016, on the eve of the first presidential trip to the island in nearly nine decades, Barack Obama appeared in a Cuban TV sketch alongside Pánfilo, a comedic character well known to viewers on the island, and delivered a “qué bolá” that no one expected to hear from a U.S. head of state.
The next day, upon setting foot in Havana, he did it again on Twitter: “¿Que bolá Cuba? Just touched down here.” In just a few hours, two words of Havana slang had bridged the gap between the street and the world of diplomacy.
What does “Asere, ¿qué bolá?” mean?
Taken literally, “asere” doesn’t really translate, and “qué bolá”—which comes from “bola,” meaning “ball”—doesn’t convey anything more literal than a vague “what’s up?” Together, the two words serve as a casual way to say hello among friends, the equivalent of “Hey, buddy, what’s up?” No translation truly captures the full meaning of the phrase. “Asere, ¿qué bolá?” belongs to that category of expressions that are understood primarily through context—the tone and situation in which they’re spoken.
"Asere, ¿qué bolá?": a greeting that dates back to West Africa
“Asere, ¿qué bolá?” did not originate on the modern street. Several linguists, including researcher Ivor L. Miller in a study published in 2005 in the journal *African Studies Review*, trace “asere” back to Efik, a language spoken in the Cross River region, between southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon. The word is believed to have made its way to Cuba with enslaved Africans who, in the 1830s, founded the Abakuá secret society in the Regla neighborhood of Havana. In this ritual context, “asere” serves as a greeting among initiates.
Other Cuban researchers lean more toward a Yoruba origin, linked to Santería, though no definitive consensus has been reached between the two hypotheses. What both versions have in common is an African root that is far older than the barroom slang to which the expression is sometimes reduced.
A word used by men, long considered vulgar
For decades, “Asere, ¿qué bolá?” was used mainly among men in Havana’s working-class neighborhoods. A woman who used it risked being labeled a “chusma,” a rather harsh way of saying “vulgar.” Language purists saw it as a sign of decline, a form of slang to be avoided in public. Cuban movies, TV shows, and telenovelas have changed the game, gradually weaving the expression into everyday scenes until it has become an almost commonplace greeting—recognized as a marker of Cuban identity rather than a linguistic flaw. In Havana, you’ll also come across neighborhood variations, such as “qué bola, consorte,” which you can still hear in La Habana Vieja.
When Cuba Heard Its Own Slang Coming from Washington
This cultural shift explains why Obama’s use of the word in March 2016 made such a strong impression. At the time, he was the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. Using a word on Twitter—and then in person—that had long been considered too colloquial for an official setting was a public acknowledgment of Cuban urban culture rather than the more formal language typically expected in diplomatic exchanges. The Cuban and international press viewed the gesture as a calculated nod rather than an improvisation, and many Cubans saw it as a greeting that spoke directly to them, delivered unfiltered by a foreign leader.
A Cuban way of saying that we exist
“Asere, ¿qué bolá?” took nearly two centuries to make its way from the secrecy of the Abakuá societies to the streets of Havana, and then from the streets to the lips of a U.S. president. This journey illustrates, better than any long speech, how an expression born in the secrecy of an Afro-Cuban religious group can become the auditory calling card of an entire country. In Haiti, RK has already recounted how dèyè mòn, gen mòn conveys an entire philosophy in just a few words. In the Dominican Republic, ¿Qué lo que? plays a role similar to that of an oral signature. What other Caribbean expression, in turn, deserves to be deciphered?
“Asere, ¿qué bolá?” is a very common informal greeting in Cuba that has no exact literal translation but is equivalent to “Hey, what’s up?” among close friends.
Several linguists, including Ivor L. Miller in a 2005 study, trace “asere” back to Efik, a West African language, and to the Abakuá secret society founded by Africans in Regla, Havana, in the 1830s, although a competing hypothesis suggests a Yoruba origin.
Barack Obama tweeted “¿Que bolá Cuba? ” on Twitter on March 20, 2016, upon landing in Havana for the first visit by a sitting U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge in 1928, after having already used the phrase in a Cuban television sketch the day before.
