Eduardo Garaicoa, co-founder of the Cuban Constitutional Movement (C40), discussed in an interview with Tania Costa what the protesters in Morón should have done after burning the municipal headquarters of the Communist Party on March 14, 2026, and his response outlines a specific protocol based on the 1940 Constitution.
For Garaicoa, the fire itself was secondary. "The burning is more of a symbolic act," he stated, noting that what was truly decisive would have been to seize that moment of territorial control to take a legal and political step of greater significance.
The expert emphasized that immediately after taking control of the area, the protesters should have detained the regime officials present in the locality. "They should have taken all those leaders into custody, all those fat bellies, the ones who are exploiting them, all the political leaders in the area," he stated.
Regarding the repressive forces, Garaicoa left no room for ambiguity: "To the repressive forces, if they resisted, well then, they should have been confronted, subdued, and placed under custody as well."
Once total control of the municipality was secured, the next step would have been the formal proclamation. "At that very moment when they have total control of the municipality, of the locality, they should officially declare the Constitution of 1940 restored and pass this information about the restoration to surrounding municipalities or localities and begin to broaden this domain or prevalence of the Constitution," he explained.
The process would not end there. According to Garaicoa, those who make that declaration could immediately turn to the international community. "The person or group of people who carry this out can immediately use any means of communication to send the news abroad and even request assistance from a foreign government to maintain their power. It's that simple."
The legal basis for all that protocol, Garaicoa insists, is the Article 40 of the 1940 Constitution, which recognizes as legitimate "the appropriate resistance for the protection of guaranteed individual rights." "And all of that is supported by Article 40 of the Constitution," he emphasized.
In a conversation with Garaicoa, Tania Costa emphasized the nature of the movement that, in Morón, took center stage. "It was a horizontal movement; there was no leader or organization behind them," a characteristic that, in Garaicoa's view, did not diminish but rather enhanced the legitimacy of the action, as any citizen or group could have carried out the same process.
The protests in Morón on March 14 began with banging pots and pans and chants of "Freedom!" and "down with the dictatorship," amid prolonged power outages and acute food shortages. The demonstrators first gathered in front of the police station and then proceeded to the headquarters of the Communist Party, where they removed furniture and documents that they burned in the street. The events resulted in five arrests and at least one young person injured by gunfire, according to reports.
The debate over the validity of the 1940 Constitution has gained momentum among the Cuban exile community in 2026. The C40 Movement argues that this Magna Carta was never legally repealed, but rather suspended by force following Batista's coup in 1952, and thus remains in effect de jure, which would allow for the prosecution of the dictatorship's crimes and the illegalization of the Communist Party without facing legal retroactivity.
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