The lawyer, political scientist, and former Bolivian minister Carlos Sánchez Berzain issued a direct warning regarding the debate on Cuba's transition: before discussing constitutions or institutional models, the only thing that truly matters is freedom.
"La libertad first, institutionalization later," defended Sánchez Berzain in an interview with Tania Costa, in which the director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy analyzed the current state of the Cuban regime and the possible paths toward change.
In this way, the analyst was categorical in rejecting any discussion of transition models while the dictatorship remains in power.
"I am reluctant, I refuse to talk about those possibilities until the change occurs. As long as the United States does not remove the dictatorship in Cuba, which is the only country that can do that, we are not going to discuss what comes next. Not with me, at least, because that is just imagination that the Cuban dictatorship uses to divide Cubans," he stated.
His position is relevant at a time when the Cuban exile community is actively debating what institutional model should govern a post-dictatorship Cuba. While some sectors of the exile promote the restoration of the 1940 Constitution and other groups present their own roadmaps, Sánchez Berzain warns that this premature debate is precisely the trap set by the regime. According to the analyst, dividing Cubans is a deliberate strategy of the Castro regime.
"One of the essential elements that the Castro regime handles in Cuba and its expansion is to multiply the axes of confrontation. We need to make people fight. Why? For whatever reason, because the more they fight, the more we will dominate them," he explained.
Sánchez Berzain pointed out that this tactic is expressed in concrete ways. "What are they doing in Cuba? They divide the regions. Cuba becomes racist. Cuba becomes elitist."
As an example of this strategy applied outside of Cuba, he mentioned the case of Bolivia, where —according to him— the castrochavista influence imposed a constitution that proclaims 36 nations.
"They have tried to replace the Bolivian nation, which is one —unity in diversity— and they have imposed a constitution stating that there are 36 nations. That is not true. Bolivia is not a plurinational country; it is a multicultural country. Everyone is multicultural, but it is one nation," he stated.
Despite his refusal to debate models before the change, Sánchez Berzain did list the scenarios he considers possible once the regime falls.
"I believe that given the state of Cuba, what is to come will be a system with a directory that manages and restores conditions of freedom and democracy, perhaps similar to the Gaza Strip; or a tutored process, maybe akin to that of Venezuela; or a different process with all that extraordinary Cuban-American human capital that exists in the world of freedom," he noted.
He also mentioned a fourth scenario: a reinstitutionalization with external intervention similar to that which transformed Japan into an economic powerhouse after World War II.
This interview, the first granted by Sánchez Berzain to CiberCuba, takes place one day after the five-time minister in Bolivia published an article titled "The Last Days of the Cuban Dictatorship" in Infobae, where he claims that the regime "has no people, has no narrative, has no economy, and has no options."
The debate on the transition has also generated critical voices within the Cuban activism that reject both the 1940 Constitution and the solutions designed from the outside, demanding a direct public consultation.
"There is a lengthy dynamic of possibilities and solutions," concluded Sánchez Berzain, emphasizing that none of them are worth discussing until Cuba is free.
Filed under: