The universe of analyzes and opinions about Cuba in Latin America oscillates between incomprehension, absence and romanticization. For some, Cubans are “very rare” and cannot be included in any of the usual categories of the social sciences. According to others, it is “an insignificant little island” that is not worth analyzing. There is no shortage of people who idealize the “Cuban model” as “a different, superior and popular democracy”.
But the Cuban case is perfectly understandable, analyzable and comparable in relation to the regional context. Most Latin American democracies are limited by criminal violence, social inequality and the political corruption of their elites, but in the region the people periodically change their rulers, organize themselves, express themselves and protest to influence government policy. Since the end of right-wing military dictatorships, citizens have changed the composition of their governments and the orientation of their policies. The alternation of neoliberal and progressive governments (and waves) demonstrate this.
Cuba, in turn, has lived for 61 years under a Soviet-style political regime –now in a post-totalitarian phase– that enshrines the one-party government, state ideology, state control of the economy, education and the means of mass communication, as well as the widespread action of a powerful political police as elements of social control. Such a regime has not admitted neither a democratic transition nor important intra-systemic changes.
In Latin America, elites are ideologically divided between conservative, reformist and radical sectors, as well as between business and political segments. They are confronted in the political arena, with disputes and alliances with the middle and popular sectors. In Cuba, the elite is merged into a social group and a state apparatus that, due to its omnipresence, is primarily responsible for violence, inequality and corruption. Not even the agenda differences that may exist within it can be expressed, preventing citizens from choosing even between different modes of authoritarian governance. The popular subject, so invoked by socialism, is more powerless in Cuba –the right to claim their social, economic, cultural, civil and political rights– than in most neighboring nations.
This authoritarian order was shaken on July 11 during the biggest protests in Cuba’s history. The backdrop to these protests was a serious crisis, which combined the collapse of the state economic model, the brutal impact of the pandemic and US sanctions. Added to all this was the task of economic ordering, a kind of structural adjustment policy that exacerbated conditions of poverty, inequality and scarcity, while the government favored the accumulation of foreign currency – opening stores that sell essential goods in dollars – and carrying out an expansion of real estate investments that was 50 times, according to official sources, greater than social spending.
Although after the protests the state maintains control of the country, the crisis and social damage continue. The demonstrations of discontent, in the physical and virtual public space, continue uninterrupted. There are a variety of groups organized to accompany detainees and their families; to defend specific agendas (including LGBT rights, in light of the discussion and consultation of the new Family Code); to demand dialogue with authorities and defend rights using formal instances. The protests have shaken the idea of a people genetically incapable of complaining to their rulers. Also the myth of a pure and eternal Revolution, which dissolves the responsibilities of the authoritarian State in the false identification of people/government/single party.
The real Cuba versus the ideal or imagined island
In this increasingly Latin American Cuba, there is also a fragmented and impoverished society. Within it, the promise of active citizenship emerged. Protestant artists, independent journalists, lay Catholics, workers, self-employed workers, peasants, common and diverse people. Diversity that accompanies prisoners’ families, collects humanitarian aid, organizes vigils in parks and churches, signs letters and organizes protests in streets and police stations.
The attitude of the Cuban state after July 11th is in line with that of other authoritarian governments –Nicaragua, Burma, Venezuela or Belarus– that criminalize the demands of their citizens. More than 1,100 citizens are currently being prosecuted over the protests. Of these, more than 500 are still in prison, including women and people of African descent, most of them from poor backgrounds. Some are minors. The crime of sedition has been used to award sentences of up to 15, 18 and 25 years to people who, through peaceful protests, demanded basic rights.
Amnesty International, among other organizations, monitors and documents the ongoing crackdown. In response to the announcement of a new demonstration on November 15, a peaceful protest for the release of political prisoners and an end to political violence, the Cuban government has responded with more repression, harassment and disqualification from its critics.
Cuban elites have failed in their revolutionary promise. They also failed in their reformist management of the national crisis. Articulated in an extractive model of domination, exploitation and accumulation, halfway between bureaucratic socialism and state capitalism, its character became reactionary. Today they no longer have anything to offer their own people, nor are they an example to be followed by Latin American societies. The Cuban regime must be evaluated with the same analytical and civic rigor with which we review the performance –in terms of development, inclusion and freedoms– of other countries in the region.
In contrast to the mantra of the old Soviet model, which advocated the growing prosperity and homogenization of the developed socialist society, Cuba is today an increasingly poor, unequal and conflictual nation. Cubans have demonstrated that they are not anthropologically different from other Latin Americans: they too have claims and rights, which they assert how and when they can, despite the permanent criminalization of their police state.
It is important, therefore, not to see the island as an incomprehensible exceptionality or, even worse, as a luminous utopia. The Cuban people and society are not untranslatable to the lexicons of Latin American politics and social sciences. The only anomaly in the Cuban case, on this (still) formally democratic continent, is the autocratic nature of the current regime.
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