By Mariana Camejo (Joven Cuba)

HAVANA TIMES — The Trump government is hoping Cuba will fall soon. In the early nineties the same was expected, and it didn’t happen, but this is not the Cuba of those times. Today, amid a sustained systemic crisis that has eroded the government’s credibility, it is this government — and no other — that has had to face a long-standing conflict. Operating as it has until now, it has little room for maneuver and little political capital; but there are steps it could take to rally as many Cubans as possible around the flag.

That said, adaptability is not the Cuban government’s usual practice. It is accustomed to speaking only to its most loyal followers and, in hostile contexts, prefers to dig in. This is an attitude that not only blocks external influence but also restricts the possibility of addressing internal problems, because it interprets as a threat the criticisms and recommendations that could help solve them. In any case, without deep reform it will be hard to generate consensus.

That change begins with understanding sovereignty as the existence of a political community that has a voice and rights,  and not solely as the argument upon which to erect discourses of resistance or heroism, the raison d’État against foreign interference.

It is naïve to think national sovereignty can be preserved without attending to individual sovereignty, because a state can declare itself sovereign, but the country will only be so if its citizens feel they have control over their destinies, if they perceive themselves as active participants in the national project, if they feel they have something they consider worth defending. That is why the unity that is indispensable to withstand external pressure is a form of political capital that is lost by closing spaces for public participation and gained by opening them. The unity of a majority, therefore, is something built through political engagement — not through obedience, but through consensus.

That said, the truth is that there are still reserves of legitimacy and consensus to which Cuban authorities could appeal, but so far, they do not seem to show the ability or the willingness to take advantage of them. Added to this, they have lost the capacity for initiative and politically mobilizing responses. An example was the initial reaction to the military operation in Venezuela: public acts devoid of real enthusiasm, repeated slogans, and staging that, once again, indicates........

© Havana Times