Once upon a time there was a democratic Cuba, where political parties decided their dispute in free elections, where citizens elected their representatives in a context of freedom. This period was short-lived, but it did exist. It spanned just over a decade.
The problem is that the single official discourse buried its historical record and oral transmission, after seven decades, became extinct. What is surprising is that this exceptional period also produced a Constitution in 1940 that expressed in its first article its republican nature by stating that it was “an independent and sovereign State, organized as a unitary and democratic republic, for the enjoyment of political freedom, social justice, individual and collective well-being and human solidarity”.
March 10 marks the 70th anniversary of the breakdown of the democratic order in Cuba. This is not to say that since its independence the island has enjoyed uninterrupted democracy. On the contrary, that single Cuban democratic period was very brief, from 1940 to 1952. Historian Carlos Manuel RodrÃguez Arechavaleta delved deeper into this stage to account for the dynamics of electoral competition.
In his book “Republican democracy in Cuba 1940-1952”, he gives an account of the party system of the time, which contrasts with the current one-party regime. He also points out that the incentives presented by the political system to multipartyism made radical parties, such as the communist, enter into a logic of electoral competition, making it an inclusive political system. Unfortunately, the result is that Cuba has lived a large part of its history under authoritarian regimes and this marks an absence in terms of democratic culture.
Both Fidel Castro’s speech and that of the current elite of the Communist Party of Cuba tried to ignore that there were great efforts to promote democratic reforms in Cuba and that there was, in fact, a period in which a plural democracy prevailed that celebrated competitive elections between such diverse political forces. as communists, socialists, liberals, conservatives and reformists.
This is well described by Loris Zanatta in her book “Fidel Castro, the Last Catholic King”. In it, there is a young Fidel Castro with a markedly anti-political speech, who contemptuously questioned the Cuban democracy of the time, which he classified as “partitocracy”. With the permanent discursive use of the term “poliquerÃa”, he challenged the consensual and dialogue-based dimension of politics, which gave rise to a coincidence with the speech that Batista later had in the coup lobby.
This democratic period was an originality even in the region. Let’s just remember that in the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo was in control, in Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza GarcÃa, and in El Salvador, in 1948, a military coup ended the government of another military man. In Cuba, on the other hand, everything indicated that its colonial history and US tutelage had been left behind when local political forces held a Constituent Assembly that would provide the legal framework for the celebration of several presidential and legislative elections in which there would be alternation of power, at least until 1952.
In fact, Fulgencio Batista, who with the 1952 coup would end the Cuban democratic period, had been elected within the framework of the Constitution in 1940. Ramón Grau San MartÃn (1944) and Carlos PrÃo Socarrás (1948) would soon follow. In elections during this period, voter turnout increased from 73% to 78%.
The so-called “October Constitution” established that the presidential election was indirect, through the electoral college, and a relative majority was sufficient (like most countries in the region at that time, there was no second round). However, in 1943, through a new Electoral Code, the direct election of the president was established.
The democratic period ended on March 10, 1952, when Batista, campaigning for the presidential elections that would be held that year, seeing himself with little chance of coming to power democratically, used his military influence to close the constitutional order. .
The Cuban people would never experience a democratic regime again, given that Batista’s coup would lead to the longest totalitarian experience in the region, embodied first by Fidel Castro and then by his brother Raúl. Today, it is President Miguel DÃaz Canel who has inherited the responsibility for preventing Cubans from freely electing their representatives.
To the surprise of international public opinion and the regime itself, on July 11, 2021, a crowd took to the streets to demand freedom and democracy. His anthem was “Patria y Vida”. The repression was immediate, today Cuba’s prisons are full of political prisoners, activists like the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara or politicians like Daniel Ferrer are still in detention. There are accusations and convictions of minors and persecution of journalists, especially women, as shown in the case of Luz Escobar.
Perhaps the Cuban youth mobilized without knowing this democratic interregnum, however, its emergence must be interpreted as a line of continuity in Cuba’s democratic tradition, a tradition that seeks to be implanted despite the shared contestation between Batista and the Castros.
