Houston/The recent report of the Working Group on the Future of Cubalinked to the Harvard Cuban Studies Program, deserves to be read carefully. It is not a minor document. Harvard recognizes the depth of the Cuban crisis and suggests that there is no way out of the national tragedy without immediate political changes. The text calls for the release of political prisoners, the decriminalization of protest, greater freedoms, a future Constituent Assembly, political pluralism and a market economy that recognizes private property.
There are, therefore, positive elements and proposals that many Cubans have defended for decades.
But precisely for this reason the document forces us to ask a much more uncomfortable question: where does the transition route proposed by Harvard really lead?
The most delicate point appears when the report maintains that the current Cuban authorities must assume a leadership role and act as facilitators of the transition process. That is, those who have controlled the State, the institutions, the justice system, the security forces and the Communist Party for decades would be called to participate in the initial conduct of change.
We Cubans have not fought for decades just to change the economic rules. We have demanded freedom, justice and dignity
And here our disagreement begins.
We Cubans have not fought for decades just to change the economic rules. We have demanded freedom, justice and dignity.
We do not simply want those who destroyed the country to better manage its reconstruction.
We do not want a more efficient economy under the same power mechanisms.
We do not want those who imprisoned opponents, repressed demonstrations, forced hundreds of thousands of compatriots into exile, and controlled national political life for decades to suddenly become the main architects of the transition.
National reconciliation is necessary. Impunity, no.
A democratic Cuba will have to reconcile with itself. He will have to live with people who yesterday were within the system and tomorrow could defend democracy. That’s inevitable. But reconciling does not mean forgetting. And much less does it mean giving those responsible for the old power the ability to decide how the past will be judged.
The Harvard report talks about amnesty for political prisoners and a peaceful transition. That deserves recognition. But a truly democratic transition also needs to answer another question: what will happen to those who were responsible for the repression and human rights violations?
Because it is one thing to incorporate officials who accept democratic rules into national reconstruction. It is quite another to preserve the power of the leadership responsible for the national tragedy under a new institutional guise. Therein lies the limit that, in my opinion, the document does not satisfactorily resolve.
A transition is not only about determining where we want to go. It consists, above all, in determining who leads the way
Harvard is right to point out that Cuba needs a political, economic and institutional transformation. He is also right to recognize the role that civil society and the diaspora will have to play and to imagine a future economy open to private property and the market. But the destination can be right and the path dangerous.
Because a transition is not only about determining where we want to go. It consists, above all, of determining who leads the way, under what rules and with what guarantees that the old power does not once again become the new power.
We Cubans need a peaceful transition, yes.
We need to rebuild the institutions, yes.
We need to recover the economy, attract investment, incorporate the diaspora and rebuild hospitals, schools, roads and the electrical system, too.
But we need something deeper: justice, truth, independent institutions, free elections and guarantees that never again can a political elite take over the State and the nation.
Harvard places us before a debate that Cuba cannot avoid. Should the transition take place with those who still control power or should it begin with the effective transfer of power to provisional and legitimate democratic institutions?
That’s not a minor difference.
It is probably the fundamental question of the Cuban transition.
Because we Cubans do not simply aspire for Castroism to be more efficient. We hope that Cuba stops being a dictatorship and once again becomes a nation of free citizens. And to achieve that Cuba, reconciliation will be essential.
But reconciliation without justice can turn into impunity; and the transition without a clear break with the monopoly of power can simply become the continuity of the same power with another face.
That is the debate that the Harvard report opens. And that debate, as painful as it may be, fundamentally belongs to Cubans.
