
{"id":272521,"date":"2023-07-09T15:23:22","date_gmt":"2023-07-09T19:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=272521"},"modified":"2023-07-09T15:23:22","modified_gmt":"2023-07-09T19:23:22","slug":"civil-society-or-people-in-cuba-a-matter-that-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/our-life\/civil-society-or-people-in-cuba-a-matter-that-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCivil society\u201d or \u201cpeople\u201d in Cuba? A matter that matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The idea of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">people<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> does not refer only to a national conglomerate, such as the \u201cCuban people\u201d or the \u201cIcelandic people.\u201d From a political point of view, the concept of people recognizes social differences and questions the forms of domination born from those differences, which segregate citizens from non-citizens, or first and second-class citizens.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For its part, civil society is not simply \u201csociety\u201d or \u201cthe whole of the population.\u201d Civil society is the associated group of citizens. However, citizenry, when it involves the material exercise of rights and the dispute of power, is always a scarce commodity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Civil society does not recognize existing social inequalities as a starting point, since it operates as if a universal community of \u201cequal\u201d citizens already existed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Its concept alludes to organized movements, intellectuals, the market, business, press systems, private or social actors. As an idea, it is not very sensitive to capture the asymmetries of the social actors in the production of political.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Having said this, I wonder, is the concept of civil society the most pertinent to explain the existing fields of conflict in Cuba? Such a context, from the class point of view, seems to exceed the explanatory capacity of civil society, to resort to the most radical notion of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">people<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_272524\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-272524\" style=\"width: 1140px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1685936438487-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-272524\" src=\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1685936438487-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1140\" height=\"815\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1685936438487-1.jpg 1140w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1685936438487-1-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1685936438487-1-1024x732.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1685936438487-1-768x549.jpg 768w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1685936438487-1-120x86.jpg 120w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1685936438487-1-350x250.jpg 350w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1685936438487-1-750x536.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1140px) 100vw, 1140px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-272524\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo N\u00e9ster N\u00fa\u00f1ez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><b>The social base of the people vs civil society<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe people united will never be defeated,\u201d was chanted at a protest in the town of Nuevitas (2022), as also happened on July 11, 2021 (J11). The official denomination of \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.presidencia.gob.cu\/es\/presidencia\/intervenciones\/discurso-pronunciado-en-el-acto-de-reafirmacion-revolucionaria-en-la-explanada-de-la-piragua\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">vandals<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d and \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/mundo\/noticias-america-latina-57808259\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">delinquents<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d for that day\u2019s protesters, whose majority demanded citizenry based on the demand for self-determined representation and inclusion, also shows the content of citizenry as a scarce commodity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The \u201cpeople\u201d is not a datum of the social structure but an act of institution, of political creation. Gramsci described the people, in the sense of \u201cthe plebeian,\u201d as \u201cthe social bloc of the oppressed,\u201d as opposed to the \u201chistorical bloc\u201d in power. In this perspective, the only seat of political power is the political community: the people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A fundamental area of the social base that is claimed as a people in Cuba is the \u201cprecariat,\u201d \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ctxt.es\/es\/20210701\/Politica\/36715\/#.YP7HEkvwIeg.twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the central sociological aspect of post-Soviet Cuba<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u201d as the sociologist Emilio Santiago has synthesized.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The social reproduction of the life of this precariat (both informal workers, as well as <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">luchadores<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, as well as formal workers with insufficient income and an urgent need to \u201csearch\u201d) suffers more acutely from the withdrawal of the State that has been experienced since the 1990s in the fields of provision of services and resources.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the same time, it is a social area that does not have self-organization, nor institutionalized political representation nor a place in \u201ccivil society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another reason could explain, if my reading is correct, the mutation in the uses of the concept of civil society in Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the 1990s, when the term appeared in the country, it was used by a large part of critical discourses, based on a liberal format, as mere opposition to the State. This is why important Cuban State officials reacted with phrases, very famous at the time, such as: civil society is a \u201cpig in a poke,\u201d or it is a \u201cTrojan horse of U.S. imperialism against the Cuban Revolution,\u201d phrases that revealed the official predisposition to the emphasis that this concept placed on associativism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, more recent theoretical perspectives can explain along another line Cuban political behavior. For institutionalist approaches, in the manner of Fred Block and Peter Evans, the State and the market are not different ways of organizing economic activity, but mutually constituting spheres.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From this angle, an area of Cuban \u201cself-employment\u201d claims to contribute to that relationship, while demanding self-organization and recognition on equal terms by the State. It <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/rebelion.org\/neoliberalismo-en-la-conceptualizacion\/?fbclid=IwAR2nFciD6iLtnuoTnUwvvuelnUQvsWNoZ16IlU6cJcmXBl84uXVtbQ9-4yo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is a discourse of complementation, and not of opposition<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, between civil society and the State.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the other hand, the current use of new political repertoires challenges the liberal notion of antagonism as an exclusive form of relationship between civil society and the State. An example of these repertoires <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sinpermiso.info\/textos\/la-movilizacion-colectiva-del-derecho-y-los-derechos-en-cuba\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are the new practices of legal activism, or legal mobilization<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, that register disputes over the legislative calendar approved after the 2019 Constitution, and in particular, disputes over the Constitutional Rights Protection Law, on Demonstration and Association Rights, and from before, on Cinema and on Social Communication. On this horizon are the growing complaints to state institutions of illegitimate police behavior.<\/span><sup><b>1<\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This critical activism supposes a recognition of the State that understands it as a field of dispute: it enables possible spaces for coordination\/confrontation with the State that are very different from those allowed by that opposition between civil society and the State, so much of the 1990s and of its scenario of post-cold war capitalist hegemony.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2019, three topics were embraced by the presidential speech in the National Assembly of People\u2019s Power (ANPP): racism, animal abuse and gender-based violence. \u201cTranscendent issues due to their high sensitivity,\u201d President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel said at the time. Such acknowledgment would not have been possible without the sustained performance of social militancies such as feminism, anti-racism, and promoters of animal welfare.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_272525\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-272525\" style=\"width: 1800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian04-de-enero-de-2022-32-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-272525\" src=\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian04-de-enero-de-2022-32-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1800\" height=\"1202\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian04-de-enero-de-2022-32-1.jpg 1800w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian04-de-enero-de-2022-32-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian04-de-enero-de-2022-32-1-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian04-de-enero-de-2022-32-1-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian04-de-enero-de-2022-32-1-1536x1026.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian04-de-enero-de-2022-32-1-750x501.jpg 750w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian04-de-enero-de-2022-32-1-1140x761.jpg 1140w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-272525\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Kaloian.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><b>Everything changes, not just civil society<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is not only civil society that experiences and expresses changes. The government and the state discourse in Cuba have also changed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the days immediately following J11, Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel issued the \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZnGMSGSVnOk&amp;ab_channel=RadioCubana\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">combat order<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d \u2014 a call for the parastatal response to confront the street protests. However, subsequently, for a limited time, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cubadebate.cu\/noticias\/2021\/07\/17\/pueblo-habanero-toma-la-piragua-en-defensa-de-la-revolucion\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the government used more conciliatory language<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and called for solidarity, unity and peace.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As part of this path, a political language about the revolutionary was promoted, such as a revolutionary erotica of love \u2014 remember the slogan \u201cPut your heart into it\u201d \u2014 and a type of family and domestic ethics (the love between the president and his wife, continually underlined in social networks, as a metaphor of national love against anti-national hatred) that had very little to do with the languages produced up to that moment by the official power in Cuba, indicated new discursive paths, and did not recognize as other ideological directions supposed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, a year later that content changed in turn: the official discourse celebrated a victory against the attempted \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/PresidenciaDeCuba\/posts\/pfbid0FMuXKA77xxY6GaWv7uHEyDqZLopkDJxGtCZGkTYjx9uG8jMDEGrtnQsJ8b5CChg8l\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">vandalic coup<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u201d In that rereading, there was no peaceful protest or any legitimacy in the protests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This rereading operated in a scenario with social memory of the debate on the 2019 Constitution, which used the term \u201cRepublic\u201d as never before since 1961 and which observed how the constitutional bill had suppressed the term \u201ccommunism,\u201d which in the end remained in the constitutional text.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In unison, on J11 D\u00edaz-Canel had called the \u201crevolutionaries, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZnGMSGSVnOk&amp;ab_channel=RadioCubana\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and specifically the \u201ccommunists,\u201d<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u201cto combat.\u201d The Cuban State could thus be, as the essayist Iv\u00e1n de la Nuez has said, \u201ca communist State obliged to govern, satisfy and represent a society that is also post-communist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The same State has been forced to promote liberal measures in socialism. In this, the role given to the market and private ownership in the current scheme is very different from what has ever been given in Cuba since the 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_272526\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-272526\" style=\"width: 1800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-272526\" src=\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1800\" height=\"1303\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1.jpg 1800w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1-300x217.jpg 300w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1-1024x741.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1-768x556.jpg 768w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1-1536x1112.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1-120x86.jpg 120w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1-750x543.jpg 750w, https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Cuba-2022-fotos-Kaloian05-de-enero-de-2022-15-1-1140x825.jpg 1140w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-272526\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Kaloian.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><b>People and social movements<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A political dynamic can be seen in Cuba that is perhaps connected, although with many differences of scale, with the global dynamics of social movements. In such movements, identity demands are not aligned only along the axis of left and right, but are transversal to different actors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Cuban government does not seem to know how to deal with it or how to process this complexity, declaring that everything is resolved between \u201crevolutionaries vs. counterrevolutionaries.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The State responds to such conflict with diverse repertoires: stigmatization and exclusion, tokenism (making small concessions to minority groups to avoid accusations of prejudice and discrimination), co-opting the topic and erasing authors (it makes the topic its own and does not recognize where it comes from or who promoted it), as it also includes problems pointed out by civil society and gives them greater state prominence, as has happened with the aforementioned issues of gender-based violence and racism, which have national attention programs, although their practical effectiveness and their execution times are quite questionable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Part of the political opposition, in turn, also reduces social problems defended by civil society to the approach of \u201ceverything against the State.\u201d A recent example is the debate on the Family Code (2022), and its rejection by opponents who consider that the \u201cfundamental problem\u201d is not recognizing the Cuban State, above the rights of communities such as LGTBQ+, a movement that was gaining specific spaces and resources with that Code.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In response to this framework, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scielo.br\/j\/rbcpol\/a\/zNCGfYyLxpMPbksm9rhYVGs\/?format=pdf&amp;lang=es\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the sociologist Cecilia Bobes has suggested<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> combining analytical schemes from the \u201cclassic\u201d literature of social movements with reflections and concepts from some recent Latin American contributions, which attend both to the contentious relationship and to the negotiation processes with the state.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bobes recalls that in a single-party system, without electoral competition, with very limited rights of association and demonstration, activists are motivated to interact non-contentiously with the State.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, when this strategy is limited and produces more cooptation than influence, the intensity of the demands can also be neutralized. This seems to be one of the reasons, Bobes also observes, for the emergence of a more independent activism, for example, in the case of race, in which anti-racist positions distance themselves from anti-racist activism with ties to the state, and in feminist positions, which do something similar with respect to the official organizations that work in this field.<\/span><sup><b>2<\/b><\/sup><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In any case, betting on a new legitimacy, based on the quality of institutional performance, and on the depth of political inclusion that it generates, seems the best alternative in the current context.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A related issue is the question of whether the Cuban state knows, wants and can take that path. Another is how the future dynamics of events push the balance of the relationship between civil society and the State towards complementarity, or towards a disruptive antagonism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Notes:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>1 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">See, for example, the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/n9.cl\/371xs\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">complaints of the historian Alina B. L\u00f3pez Hernandez<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/n9.cl\/fr2vf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">trans activist Mel Herrera.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>2 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, the collective of the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/afrocubanas.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Afrocubanas<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> magazine<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/yositecreoCuba\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yo s\u00ed te creo<\/span><\/a> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">project do it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is the concept of civil society the most pertinent to explain the existing fields of conflict in Cuba?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":272523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17953],"tags":[11345,8863],"ppma_author":[33569],"class_list":["post-272521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-life","tag-civil-society","tag-cuban-society"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>\u201cCivil society\u201d or \u201cpeople\u201d in Cuba? 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