The Institution of the Constitutional Reform in Cuba (I).

Legal norms are subject to specific historical circumstances and the complexity of the moment Cuban society is going through cannot be ignored when it comes to thinking, proposing and introducing any change in the Constitution.

The urgency of shielding, expanding and modernizing in rights, institutionality and citizen practices, the achievements and civilizing structures reached in Cuba, of guaranteeing and strengthening citizens’ relations with the State and the control of public officials’ public actions, run in parallel with the development, expansion and socialization of the idea of democracy and justice that the Republic and Socialism have historically claimed in our country, but also with the need to legitimize and build very specific political and social consensus and the creation of a popular political culture strongly impregnated with the role of the Constitution as the articulator of the political life of the country.

What is a constitutional reform? What are the practical implications of carrying one out? What would be its scope in the Cuban case?

No change to the Constitution can be tied to technicalities, since it is a political institution. The Constitution is not the Holy Scriptures, the legal norms are subject to concrete historical circumstances and the complexity of the moment in which Cuban society is living cannot be ignored when thinking, proposing and introducing any change in the Constitution. This was the case when the Constitution was created in 1976, when it had to be adjusted to the reality of the context created by the Revolution, which represented a radical change with respect to the constitutional thinking that had existed in the country up to that time.

The first thing to bear in mind is that the supremacy of the Cuban Constitution is, beyond the current situation, a political imperative that increasingly affects the coherence, functionality and possibilities of reproduction of the political, economic and social system established by the Constitution itself as a social pact. This is an element that is not always sufficiently valued, or is underestimated, as a consequence of the scant importance that the Cuban Magna Carta has had until today in our political culture and institutional praxis.

Written by Osvaldo Manuel Álvarez PhD in Political Science. Consulting Professor.