Cuba: The Times are Changing

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In Cuba there is a transition underway. When this term is used, one generally thinks of a complicated political process, sometimes traumatic, but what is happening on the island is a transition from one phase to another in terms of any society's power base, which is, precisely, the citizen.

We have become so accustomed to political claims of secret factions and covert sites where “those who rule the world” gather that we have lost sight of the unquestionable fact that, regardless of the will of those who may be perceived as powerful, there is no social change without citizen mobilization, whatever forms and orientations of these movements may take.

The French Revolution did not begin and end with the seizure of the Bastille, but rather was the result of a gradual and progressive change in the mentality of thousands of French people, who no longer wanted to remain subjects, who wanted to become bourgeois —that word demonized by Communist propaganda precisely because what the Marxist dictatorships sought was to create wwas new subjects whose only identity and value was associated with their new class. “Men die, the Party is immortal.” In this scheme of post feudal subjugation there was no room for the concept of a self-sufficient citizen, not dependent on any State, divine power, or the Sun King, capable of thinking and making decisions for himself and, above all, choosing his own rulers.

The transition is a process that begins in the individual and then spreads to communities until it takes shape in what is known as power in numbers. But without a change in the way people relate to rulers, and in their perspectives on the possibility of a better future, none of this is possible. The shift is from a monolithic vision to a pluralistic vision of power. The monolithic model is the system that dictators want people to perceive, solid and immovable, like a mountain, as if nothing could be changed except the people at the top. But there's a problem with this model: it's not true! Power doesn't work this way, no matter how many times the government, your boss, or anyone else says it does.

Since no one rules alone, power is based on obedience. Soldiers, bureaucrats, Party members, people attending regime events, allow the system to run through their obedience. When these patterns change and, in addition to openly or stubbornly disobeying the dictates of the regime, people decide to participate in opposition or protest events, power gradually begins to erode. Each person is a small, individual source of power, and when people find ways to organize with others, they generate alternative power of incalculable proportions.

The regime is afraid of connections, not necessarily around a structure. If artists and intellectuals connect around an idea or a demand, and that idea or demand appeals to workers, and people in general, there is already a movement. And if a victory is scored, however small, this erodes the system's image of omnipotence, and generates contagious enthusiasm. When people act, the stagnation that favors oppression is overcome. The objective of repression is to generate fear, which creates habits of obedience and unconditional compliance that allow the status quo to survive.

This is not some theoretical elucubration, but rather a reality supported by historical experiences and concrete numbers with the maximum possible statistical rigor. In their book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, Drs. Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth studied all the violent and non-violent campaigns resulting in the overthrow of governments or the liberation of territories from 1900 to 2006. They created a database of 323 massive actions, and analyzed them based on about 160 variables related to success criteria, participant categories, state capacities, etc.

The results of that study showed that nonviolent campaigns were twice as likely to succeed as violent ones, as they led to political changes 53% of the time, compared to 26% for violent campaigns. More importantly, the study also revealed that a surprisingly small proportion of the population, only 3.5%, properly prepared and acting strategically for a given period of time, can guarantee the success of a given campaign.

Despite all the arguments to the contrary, Cuba is no exception to this rule. A recent study by Cubadata, named Exploring Possible Futures for Democratization in Cuba, showed that 51.7% of Cubans surveyed have participated in some form of civil protest. The survey is based on the results of six surveys conducted between September 2023 and February 2024, involving more than 10,000 people on the island. The Latin American Center for Nonviolence carried out a simple comparison between the data on protests compiled by the Cuban Conflicts Observatory and the repressive acts compiled by the Cuban Human Rights Observatory from January to September 2024, and it turned out that in every month demonstrations outnumbered repressive actions, which validates an axiom of non-violent strategic conflicts: repression does not prevent protest.

It is about generating trends, new behavior patterns by citizens in the face of an oppressive system. As the etymology of the word indicates, it is a movement, large numbers of people marching in the direction of a common goal. Movements can take different forms and adopt different strategies, but they are always connected by a shared vision. Change is not generated by virtue of a sudden shift in society, but rather by a gradual transformation of habits and behaviors commonly considered acceptable by a group. This is the meaning of the term empowerment, which constitutes the basis of any transformation at the social level, and it is what we are seeing emerge in Cuba in the actions of those who are, with increasing frequency, finding spaces for activism.

Rome was not made in a day, and the Berlin Wall, although it was, did not fall that night, on November 9, 1989. Rather, it has been collapsing long before that, in the minds of the inhabitants of the GDR and of the entire Iron Curtain. 'There is no doubt that in Cuba the process is underway, people are moving from passive obedience to active protest.' It is just a matter of time, and also of spaces. This is not a story, but rather a measurable and calculable reality.

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