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The Cuban political scientist Armando Chaguaceda published this week on Facebook a critical reflection on collaboration with dictatorships, in which he warns of the danger posed by those who choose to act within the charades of power in exchange for minor benefits, betraying the Cuban people and those who have given everything in their fight against the dictatorship.
The text, tagged with the hashtags #PoliticalFictions, #FraudChange, and #FalseOpposition, establishes from the outset a conceptual distinction that Chaguaceda considers fundamental: "One thing is the pragmatism that fights from what is possible, without sacrificing values and just goals; another is the possibilism that accepts acting, for egos and crumbs, within pantomimes designed by those in power."
The political scientist, exiled in Mexico since 2008 and unable to return to Cuba since 2011, puts his critique in the context of the current situation in Cuba and Venezuela: "Cuba and Venezuela are experiencing hours of extremely high risk and political uncertainty," he writes, noting that in this context, the attitudes of those who allow themselves to be used by declining regimes are particularly harmful.
Chaguaceda characterizes those attitudes as "harmful and reprehensible" due to their "inherent falseness" and "ineffectiveness for real change," and warns that those who collaborate with the regime do so "at the expense of an entire people," and especially "at the cost of the sacrifices made by those who gave everything in confronting the dictatorship, contributing to the arrival of the current moment."
The political scientist denounces what he calls the masquerade of "responsible opponents" and warns that this phenomenon will find fertile ground in the survival maneuvers carried out by both Havana and Caracas: "Such a masquerade of 'responsible opponents' will find fertile ground in the survival maneuvers deployed by Caracas and Havana," he writes.
In light of this reality, Chaguaceda calls for an immediate collective debate on the forms and consequences of such collaborationism, a discussion he defines as "unrelated to personal disqualifications but grounded in criteria of political responsibility and transparency." He concludes with a phrase in capital letters: "And we need to have that conversation NOW."
The statement comes days after the regime officially published a package of 176 economic reform measures organized into 23 strategic axes, which include the authorization of private banking, private exchange houses, removal of the limit on workers in private enterprises, greater municipal autonomy, and foreign direct investment.
The regime presents the package as the greatest opening to market mechanisms since the Special Period, although it insists that its goal is to "preserve socialism." However, analysts and Cuban-American entrepreneurs have rejected the measures, considering them insufficient without a genuine political change. Some economists, such as Pedro Monreal, have severely criticized the government package.
The businessman Carlos Saladrigas had stated before the announcement of reforms that "there will be no sustainable investment without political change" and an independent judiciary. Meanwhile, businessman Iván Herrera was even more direct in rejecting Díaz-Canel's measures: "I won't invest a dime while you are in power".
Chaguaceda's post is accompanied by an image of the monument to the Solidarity martyrs in Gdansk, Poland, a symbolic reference to the labor movement that challenged Polish communism in the 1980s and achieved a real democratic transition, implicitly contrasting with what the political scientist views as cosmetic maneuvers of the Cuban regime.
It is not the first time that Chaguaceda has raised his voice in this regard. On June 13, he published the essay "The Enlightened Betrayal", in which he denounced the complicity of progressive Western academia in the face of the repression by the Cuban regime. In previous analyses, he has maintained that Cuba needs a "regime change," not economic reforms.
Chaguaceda has also warned that without effective action to neutralize the regime's leadership, including Raúl Castro, there will be no real transition in Cuba, and any process that does not break with the inherited power structure constitutes, in his own terms, a "fraudulent change."
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