Fake Change in Cuba: Pinkwashing Cuba's New Communist Constitution

Window dressing as reform.

Constitutional project to perpetuate communist party rule in Cuba

The Castro regime is attempting to legitimize their six decade and ongoing dictatorship with cosmetic reforms and a "change" in the presidency, but the reality is that beyond window dressing nothing has changed. Reuters news wire service recognizes now a hundred days into President Miguel Diaz-Canel's presidency that "the Castro dynasty is still calling practically all the shots" and that there has been a change in style but not in substance.  The Economist on July 26, 2018 highlighted the campaign for the regime to legitimize itself concluding, "[y]et for all the headlines Raúl’s reforms have yielded, the twin pillars of Fidel Castro’s rule—the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, and the state’s domination of the economy—remain in place."  One element in this campaign is that the new constitutional draft, overseen by Raul Castro, opens the way for gay marriage in Cuba.

It is important to recall that the same leadership of the Castro regime, now in their 70s and 80s, who remain in power today, and carried out anti-Gay draconian policies in the past, are the ones now advocating for the change on gay marriage in the constitution.

One should not forget that the Castro regime placed Gays and Lesbians in forced labor camps beginning in 1964 in what they called Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct."  Persons with "effeminate mannerisms": what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior" were taken to these camps. Twenty years later with the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in Cuba the regime rounded up all who were HIV positive. Cuba is the only nation in the world that mandated universal HIV testing and enforced isolation of all virus carriers in detention facilities from 1986 to 1994.

This Constitutional initiative by the Castro regime is a textbook example of pinkwashing. Pinkwashing is "the practice of presenting something, particularly a state, as gay-friendly in order to soften or downplay aspects of its reputation considered negative."
 Amnesty International issued a statement welcoming same sex marriage in Cuba, but also recognizing that the repressive state machinery remains intact. Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International, was quoted as follows:

“The news that Cuba’s National Assembly has signed off on a new constitution that, among other things, opens the path to legalize same-sex marriage if approved by referendum in the coming months, is a potentially huge step forward for the rights of LGBTI people in Cuba and the Caribbean. We welcome this advance and urge the government to embrace dialogue with all sectors of society and allow plurality of voices as it makes further reforms. However, during the first 100 days of the Díaz-Canel presidency, we continued to receive frequent and alarming reports of Cuban authorities arbitrarily detaining human rights defenders and holding them in short-term detention. Environmental activist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola was conditionally released earlier this month, although the authorities could still return him to prison for the rest of his sentence, while another prisoner of conscience, Eduardo Cardet, remains behind bars almost 20 months after his arrest simply for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression. Clever showmanship by public officials at Cuba’s Universal Periodic Review before the UN in May failed to mask the reality of life on the island, where the authorities maintain a web of control through practices such as arbitrary use of criminal law and discriminatory dismissals of state employees."

The Castro regime has gotten positive press, but at the same time the underlying repressive nature of the regime remains intact and nothing substantive has changed. However lost in the conversation and highlighted by Cuban human rights defender, Rosa María Payá is "that the constitutional referendum is not legitimate because the dictatorship violates all guarantees of a credible electoral process, nor possibility to campaign, nor presence of independent observers, nor possibility of parallel counting, nor freedom to vote without coercion." Worse yet voting yes or no in this rigged process is a trap.
The new constitution will drop the objective of constructing a "communist society" but maintain the one party system ruled by the Communist Party. Whether you vote "yes" or "no" you are voting for the perpetuation of one party rule under the Cuban Communist Party, and the head of the party (currently Raul Castro) as the ultimate power in Cuba. This is found in the old Constitution and remains unchanged in the new draft.

What should one call a reform process without reforms? Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas,  called this "fraudulent change" and it cost him his life on July 22, 2012.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas's existential and nonviolent threat to the Castro regime

"Two years and nine months since the unexplained deaths of Harold and Oswaldo. We continue to demand an investigation for justice and an end to impunity."- Christian Liberation Movement over twitter on April 22, 2015

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas spoke truth to power his entire life. On March 30, 2012, speaking on behalf of the Christian Liberation Movement he warned how the dictatorship would use the resources of the Cuban diaspora to perpetuate itself in power condemning it:

Our Movement denounces the regime's attempt to impose a fraudulent change, i.e. change without rights and the inclusion of many interests in this change that sidesteps democracy and the sovereignty of the people of Cuba. The attempt to link the Diaspora in this fraudulent change is to make victims participate in their own oppression. The Diaspora does not have to "assume attitudes and policies in entering the social activity of the island." The Diaspora is a Diaspora because they are Cuban exiles to which the regime denied rights as it denies them to all Cubans. It is not in that part of oppression, without rights, and transparency that the Diaspora has to be inserted, that would be part of fraudulent change.

The gradual approach makes sense only if there are transparent prospects of freedom and rights. We Cubans have a right to our rights. Why not rights? It's time. That is the peaceful change that we promote and claim. Changes that signifies freedom, reconciliation, political pluralism and free elections. Then the Diaspora will cease being a Diaspora, because all Cubans will have rights in their own free and sovereign country. That is why we fight.

Less than four months later he was killed, along with Christian Liberation Movement youth leader Harold Cepero in what now appears to have been an extrajudicial killing carried out by Cuban state security.

The key to liberation in a nonviolent struggle was first formulated theoretically in 1548 and today over twitter Rosa María Payá quoted a key passage from that important work on strategic nonviolence: 

"I don't ask that you push or topple  the tyrant, but simply that you support him no longer." - Etienne de La Boetie, 1548

Etienne de La Boetie's call from 1548 was echoed by Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas when he denounced the attempt "to make victims participate in their own oppression." Change occurs not by fighting or resisting the dictatorship, but by ending one's participation in one's own oppression. This is a powerful and nonviolent idea that poises an existential threat to the Castro dictatorship in Cuba.

Cuban woman not allowed to return home to visit her ailing 93 year old father

Blanca Reyes: Denied entry to Cuba to visit her ailing dad

 Over twitter yesterday learned that the Consulate General of Cuba in Madrid (Spain), refused the representative of the Ladies in White in Europe, Blanca Reyes, an entry permit to her homeland that she had requested on July 22, 2013 to see her father who is 93 years old and very ill and lives in the Cuban city of Sancti Spiritus. In an article published by ACI press Blanca said:

"My father is 93 years old and is very sick. I wanted to see him before he died," She said her father told her over the phone "that he wanted to touch me before he died, but now they will not let me go."  

According to ACI Press "the consulate official told her on Tuesday that permission had been 'denied'."

Cuban nationals are required to appear before a consulate and apply for permission to return to their own country even if they have a valid passport.

 Between 70,000 and 300,000 Cubans are banned from returning to their homeland under arbitrary criteria set up by the dictatorship. Now regime apologists such as John McAuliff of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development claim that "Cuba now provides greater freedom of travel to virtually all of its citizens than does the U.S."  

Human Rights Watch in their 2013 report document that Cuban citizens still face numerous restrictions traveling not only internationally but in Cuba itself:

Reforms to travel regulations that went into effect in January 2013 eliminate the need for an exit visa to leave the island, which had previously been used to deny the right to travel to people critical of the government and their families. However, the reform establishes that the government may restrict the right to travel on the vague grounds of “defense and national security” or “other reasons of public interest,” which could allow authorities to continue to deny people who express dissent the ability to leave Cuba.
The government restricts the movement of citizens within Cuba by enforcing a 1997 law known as Decree 217. Designed to limit migration to Havana, the decree requires Cubans to obtain government permission before moving to the country's capital. It is often used to prevent dissidents traveling to Havana to attend meetings and to harass dissidents from other parts of Cuba who live in the capital.

In December of 2011 rumors circulated that Cubans travel rules would be loosened, but it was not until January of 2013 that dissidents long barred from traveling were able to once again travel out of the country. There is no right to travel for Cubans. New rules were set up but in a country with no rule of law the arbitrary nature of the dictatorship remains as is demonstrated in the case of Blanca Reyes who is being denied the right to return home to visit her ailing father.

The Christian Liberation Movement launched a petition drive known as the Heredia Project and have gathered thousands of signatures calling on the regime to recognize the right to travel of Cubans and to demand real not fake change. In the meantime despite all the propaganda and press the regime with its diktats keeps Cuban families divided and in Blanca's case a daughter from seeing her dying father.

Its just new rules for the same old and cruel game of fraudulent change.

The Four Pillars of Fraudulent Change in Cuba

 One of the reasons that Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was killed on July 22, 2012 was that he denounced the fraudulent change taking place in Cuba. Former prisoner of conscience  Antonio Díaz Sánchez lays out what are the four pillars of this fake change.

Antonio Díaz Sánchez

WHAT IS THE FRAUDULENT CHANGE?

By Antonio Díaz Sánchez. 

Member of the Coordinating Council of the Christian Liberation Movement

-To deny the existence of the opposition, if not, discredit and deny we have projects and alternatives for peaceful change.

-Compensate the state of exile and humiliation of the Cuban Diaspora with their supposed insertion into the same political system, without rights, that condemns them to their exile status

-Substitute the National Dialogue, we are proposing, for a negotiation that is high level, exclusive, elitist and without transparency.

-Lowering the dignity of Cubans spreading slander that they do not want, nor deserve, political rights but allegedly only aspire to live better economically.

AND MANY OTHER STRATEGIES AIMED AT MAINTAINING TOTALITARIAN POWER

Fraudulent Change

Original text in Spanish taken from official Christian Liberation Movement website reproduced below:

 ¿QUE ES EL CAMBIO FRAUDE? 

Por Antonio Díaz Sánchez. Miembro del Consejo coordinador del MCL

 -Negar la existencia de la oposición, cuando no, desprestigiarla y negar que tengamos proyectos y alternativas de cambios pacíficos.

-Compensar el estado de destierro y humillación de los cubanos de la Diáspora con su supuesta inserción en el mismo sistema político, sin derechos, que los condena a su condición de exiliados

-Sustituir el Diálogo Nacional, que estamos proponiendo, por una negociación en las alturas, excluyente, elitista y sin transparencia.

-Rebajar la dignidad de los cubanos propagando la injuria de que no quieren, ni merecen, derechos políticos, sino que supuestamente sólo aspiran a vivir mejor económicamente.

Y MUCHAS OTRAS ESTRATEGIAS DIRIGIDAS A MANTENER EL PODER TOTALITARIO