{"id":232486,"date":"2021-01-01T11:14:06","date_gmt":"2021-01-01T16:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=232486"},"modified":"2021-01-01T11:14:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-01T16:14:06","slug":"in-difficult-times-the-tango-of-normalization-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/in-difficult-times-the-tango-of-normalization-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIn difficult times\u201d: the tango of normalization (IV)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m curious that none of the observers of recent Cuban politics, not even my jurist friends, have commented on the planned legislation on demonstration and assembly in the implementation plan of the new Constitution.<\/p>\n

According to official sources, the approved schedule for 2019-2022<\/a> identified it with the title \u201cRights of demonstration and assembly\u201d and proposed to consider it in September 2020. This was derived directly from Article 56 of the Constitution, where it is stated that \u201crights of assembly, demonstration and association, for lawful and peaceful purposes, are recognized by the State.\u201d<\/p>\n

To give readers an idea, several main laws were planned in 2020, including Territorial Planning, Courts, Criminal Procedure, Housing, Public Health, Claim of constitutional rights and National defense. Much was postponed in the year of the pandemic, not just in quantity. It was not the case, by the way, of the Law on Associations, scheduled for 2022 in the same schedule, a date that has just been ratified by the National Assembly of People\u2019s Power (ANPP). As for the decree-law on demonstration and assembly<\/a>, its normative status was \u201cmodified\u201d and
\npostponed until the next legislature (April 2023), along with others of higher rank, such as defense and national security, citizenship, land, migration and foreigners.<\/p>\n

If the latest events in November<\/a> put the cursor on the need to implement Article 56, it should not be forgotten that the issue of Cuban emigrated citizens belongs to that same larger political plane, even though the constitutional text does not speak of them. Institutionalizing the relationship between the State, Cuban society, and its members inside and outside the island also depends on how the pending laws on citizenship, immigration, migration, and others, give new content to that relationship. If the political will continues to be not to subordinate the relationship with emigrants to the political situation with the United States or with any other country, will we have to wait for the election of a new National Assembly to bring it closer to a new normal.<\/p>\n

Regardless of how this question is answered, returning to the tango step with the United States that concerns us in this series, the question of the role of Cuban Americans has a different and its own connotation.<\/p>\n

I had previously put on the table some rather provocative questions about the place of Cuban Americans as actors in American society and politics, and about their impact, supposed or real, on Cuban political dynamics.<\/p>\n

Are they pieces on the U.S. board? Do they have their own game?<\/p>\n

Are they being moved like pawns moving in one direction? Or rather like chess knights, walking one way and another, back and forth? Do we know how they really do it? Is it like the polls and the TV channels in Spanish say? What if they were not an irremissible part of any game, neither on the side of white nor on black? If we stopped considering them pieces on that board, why would the vast majority not be?<\/p>\n

Cuban-Americans and the 2020 Presidential Election: Evidence and Hypotheses from the 2020 Cuba Poll (I)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n