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The Cuban political scientist and historian Armando Chaguaceda published an essay on his Facebook profile this Saturday titled "The Enlightened Betrayal," in which he denounces the complicity of the progressive academia in the Western and Latin American world regarding the repression of the Cuban regime.
Chaguaceda, a researcher specialized in the processes of democratization and autocratization in Latin America and Russia, supports his argument with the work "La trahison des clercs" (1927) by the French philosopher Julien Benda, who almost a century ago already denounced the subordination of intellectuals to political passions at the expense of universal values.
"There is a form of betrayal that makes no noise. It doesn’t wear a uniform nor does it sign decrees. It is exercised from university chairs, from well-paid opinion columns, from academic forums where the future of the world is debated," writes the political scientist at the beginning of the text.
Chaguaceda points out that the issue is not the progressive predominance in universities but when that bias transforms into a filter that determines which sufferings deserve attention and which are politically inconvenient.
Regarding Cuba, it is categorical: "Being leftist does not grant anyone, by itself, moral superiority. Being progressive does not guarantee ethical coherence. Inhabiting the ideological field that has historically denounced oppression does not exempt anyone—absolutely no one—from exercising it or being complicit with those who do."
The essay recalls specific cases that academia ignored: the black musicians of the San Isidro Movement incarcerated, the artists from November 27, 2020, who gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture and were beaten or exiled, and the tens of thousands of protesters from the July 11, 2021, the largest social outbreak in Cuba's recent history, repressed with sentences of up to 20 years in prison.
Chaguaceda asks where the intellectuals were then who do not hesitate to sign manifestos against any other form of repression, and he answers: in silence, or worse, “producing analyses that relativized the repression, always finding an external cause— the blockade, imperialist intervention, the provocation from Miami—that shifted the responsibility away from the government.” His verdict is harsh: “That silence was not neutral. That silence was a decision.”
The text could also refer to the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), pressured in 2021 by more than 300 experts on Cuban issues to make a statement regarding human rights violations in Cuba. The response was described by some signatories as “cowardly, complicit, and abject”. The scandal worsened when a colonel of MININT was announced as a participant in a LASA panel on the 11J.
Chaguaceda describes the attitude of academics who, from privileged positions in Western universities, dismiss the claims of Cubans seeking any solution, including foreign intervention, as "intellectual colonialism": "Judging it from a position of privilege is a form of cruelty that masquerades as political sophistication."
The context supporting the complaint is compelling. According to data from Prisoners Defenders, published in April 2026, there were 1,250 political prisoners in Cuba, including minors still serving sentences. Of the protesters from 11J, more than 200 were convicted of sedition with an average sentence of 10 years of imprisonment.
The essay concludes with a direct warning to that academy: "History will not absolve you. What will remain of you, when all of this has been judged with the distance that time provides, is your embarrassed silence. And that silence will speak louder than all your articles, all your lectures, all your books combined."
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