It is time to democratize Cuba

The consequences of the invasion of Ukraine are rightly the priority in international affairs.

Meanwhile, governments and citizens should continue to be attentive to what is happening in other regions.

Cuba is in a moment of tension that the Spanish Government and the democratic governments of Latin America should not ignore.

On July 11, 2021, Cubans took to the streets to protest against the government.

The regime's reaction was repression, illegal house arrest, imprisonment and forced exile.

Since 2018, an important group of young artists represent the most articulate opposition that the Government has faced.

These young people have been the first to confront the regime for the lack of freedom of expression.

Unlike previous opposition groups, the artists' discourse has mobilized Cuban society.

Today, the name of the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, imprisoned with an unjustifiable sentence, is recognized by a large majority of Cubans.

Luis Manuel has become a symbol of the failure of the Revolution: a young Afro-Cuban who, from one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Havana, asks for freedom of expression.

Trying to specify the days that Luis Manuel has been imprisoned since 2017 is very complicated, because his arrests were constant.

He has recently been sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to participate in the July 11 demonstrations.

Other young artists have been imprisoned or forced into exile.

Many of them have chosen Madrid as a refuge, while others remain persecuted on the island, under house arrest or in prison.

In order to give the repression a legal framework, the Government has modified the Penal Code and has prohibited Cubans from receiving funds from foreign institutions.

Article 143 determines that the conviction for receiving funds to carry out activities against the State can be sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The heading of “activities against the State” is aimed at civil society organizations or media outlets that receive financial support from European or American foundations.

Receiving this type of aid from foundations or non-governmental organizations in the United States has always been an excuse to socially condemn recipients as agents of the American government.

This new Code aggravates the circumstance for the Cuban people, since it empowers the Government to interpret any act as provocative or dismissive.

In addition to internal repression, one of the problems faced by young Cubans is to demolish the myth of the Revolution that, on that small island, led by Fidel and Che, confronted the American empire to build real socialism and the man new.

That myth is not only alive in the Venezuela of Nicolás Maduro;

it is also deeply rooted in European social democracy.

For example, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, after the protests and the repression of July 11, only dared to say “it is evident that Cuba is not a democracy”.

Incomprehensibly, the democratic left is reluctant to accept the anachronism that the Cuban dictatorship represents today, 33 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and 42 years after the democratic transitions in Latin America.

The reality is that when intellectuals, journalists and democratic politicians avoid naming and condemning the Government of Cuba as a dictatorship, they only condemn the Cuban people to "continue building a socialism" with food shortages, collapsing urban infrastructure and human rights violations.

To continue insisting that the US embargo is to blame for the failure of the Revolution is to disregard the economic structure that the Castro brothers imposed.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) control the economy through the GAESA conglomerate.

The military-businessmen supervise all the sectors from which foreign currency enters the economy.

One of the key sectors is tourism.

The hotel chains that invest in Cuba negotiate with the military.

Before the images of July 11 last year, many Cubans believed that the FAR were part of the people and—unlike Latin American experiences—would not repress them.

The images of that day and the days that followed dismantled that myth.

Raúl Castro was the FAR minister from 1959 to 2008. He retired from public life in 2021, when Miguel Díaz Canel, president since 2018, was appointed secretary of the Communist Party.

Díaz-Canel has not shown that he has the capacity to confront Cuba's economic problems.

In reality, the strong man of the post-Castro regime was General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, former son-in-law of Raúl Castro and director of the GAESA conglomerate.

López-Calleja passed away on July 1, leaving an unexpected power vacuum.

López-Calleja was part of the Castro family and knew perfectly well the regime's economic management.

It is impossible not to assume that there is currently a struggle for power in Cuba.

López-Calleja was emerging as the man who would continue to run the economy, and politics, in the shadows.

His death left a power vacuum and broke the Castro dynasty.

The only solution would be for Brigadier General Alejandro Castro Espín, son of Raúl Castro, to move from the Ministry of the Interior to manage the Cuban economy.

Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, bodyguard and grandson of Raúl Castro and head of the Department of Personal Security of the Ministry of the Interior, is among the possible successors.

All these candidates demonstrate the power of the FAR in every corner of the Cuban government.

The mobilization capacity of young activists, the exhaustion of the Cuban population in the face of electricity cuts and the shortage of food and medicine,

plus the death of López-Calleja can open doors to change in the face of the boredom and discontent of the population.

The impact of the fall of the Cuban dictatorship thanks to a group of young artists should not be underestimated.

The young Cubans who from inside or outside of Cuba are risking their freedom and their future to establish democracy should not be ignored.

The mobilized do not necessarily express a political option.

However, the demand for freedom and democracy is spreading throughout the island.

The young Cubans who from inside or outside of Cuba are risking their freedom and their future to establish democracy should not be ignored.

The mobilized do not necessarily express a political option.

However, the demand for freedom and democracy is spreading throughout the island.

The young Cubans who from inside or outside of Cuba are risking their freedom and their future to establish democracy should not be ignored.

The mobilized do not necessarily express a political option.

However, the demand for freedom and democracy is spreading throughout the island.

There are currently three dictatorships in the region: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Democracy is in a period of weakening in Brazil, El Salvador and Peru.

Haiti is a failed state.

In Colombia, with a political change at the door and nine years after the signing of the Peace Agreement, the assassinations of social leaders continue.

Mexico is the country in which the most journalists have been killed in 2021.

The fall of the longest dictatorship in the region could lead to the weakening of other autocracies or the strengthening of democracy.

Cuba is not a military threat in the region.

However, Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows once again that the promotion of democracy in all corners of the planet is crucial for peace and cooperation between countries.

The Government of the PSOE, the Government of the US Democratic Party and the Latin American democratic governments cannot ignore this young generation of Cubans who are fighting for democracy and freedom.

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine brings us, day after day, terrible memories of the 1940s. Let us bring Cuba to the democratic table.

The sooner the better.

More democracies in the world guarantee the peace that Putin destroyed.

Rut Diamint

is a professor at the Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires.

is a professor at the Saint Louis University-Madrid Campus.

Both are collaborators of Public Agenda.

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