"The 'people' as a shield: The old formula of the Cuban regime to speak on behalf of everyone"

The Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR) once again resorted to one of the most persistent constructs of the Cuban political discourse.

"The heroism of our people is what has halted the imperialists, the price they know they must pay for an aggression against our country," published the organization on the social network X, citing the dictator Fidel Castro.

The phrase summarizes an idea that has been repeated for decades: in the face of a threat, it is not the government, the Communist Party, or even the Armed Forces that take center stage in the official narrative. It is "the people."

That people is ready to fight, resist, sacrifice, and, if necessary, die for the so-called "revolution".

But who exactly is "the people" when the Cuban regime speaks?

A politically defined community

In official language, "people" does not always function as a synonym for the entire body of Cuban citizens. It often designates those who identify with the "revolution" and accept the political order established after 1959.

It is not a new distinction.

In The History Will Absolve Me, Castro explained what he meant by "the people" when he spoke of struggle. He did not indiscriminately include all of society, but rather certain popular sectors that he believed were willing to fight for revolutionary change and, when the time came, to give "even the last drop of blood".

After 1959, that category expanded to become closely linked to a series of concepts that the official discourse presents as inseparable: people, Revolution, homeland, sovereignty, socialism, and Party.

The very Granma has theorized this identification. In 2021, it spoke of the "identification of the PCC with the people" and presented the Party as the political expression of the nation and guarantee of the historical continuity of the Revolution.

The operation has immense political utility: if the Party represents the people and the Revolution embodies their will, defending the system ceases to be seen as the defense of a specific power structure. It becomes the defense of Cuba.

The Army is also "the people."

Perhaps no concept better illustrates this fusion than the definition of the Armed Forces as "the uniformed people".

The expression, attributed to Camilo Cienfuegos and repeated for decades by Cuban institutions, symbolically blurs the line between society and the state's military apparatus.

The FAR would not simply be a professional armed force subordinate to political power. They would be the very people in uniform.

The doctrine of the "Total People's War" takes this idea to its fullest extent. National defense is conceived as a general mobilization in which every citizen must have a mission and a place in the event of conflict.

Hence, the phrase now highlighted by the MINFAR is particularly significant. Castro is not only speaking about the cost of confronting the Cuban army. He is speaking about the price of confronting the "heroism of our people".

The potential enemy would face, according to that construct, not specific institutions, but all of Cuba.

1980: those who were leaving and "the people" who repudiated them

The usefulness of the concept is even more evident when the conflict is not with a foreign power, but rather among the Cubans themselves.

During the crisis at the Embassy of Peru and the Mariel exodus in 1980, the official discourse avoided portraying the events as evidence of a fracture within society.

Granma described those who entered the diplomatic mission as «criminals, social delinquents, anti-socials, idle, and parasites for the vast majority».

Before them appeared another category: "the people".

The mobilizations promoted by the regime were named the “Marches of the Combatant People”. The central report to the II Congress of the PCC later stated that “the people demonstrated an unparalleled display of strength, unity, awareness, combativeness, and discipline” and even described the actions against those who wished to leave the country as “the repudiation of scum by the people”.

The construction was effective: everyone was Cuban, but only one of the parties retained the political status of "the people" within the official narrative.

The Maleconazo: when those who stifle protest are “the people”

The mechanism reappeared on August 5, 1994.

During the Maleconazo, hundreds of Cubans took part in one of the most significant anti-government protests that had occurred until then under Castro's regime in Havana.

The response included police, security forces, groups of civilians mobilized in support of the government, and workers from the Blas Roca contingent. There are testimonies and images of civilians participating in the confrontation and repression of the demonstrators.

However, the official narrative later turned that clash among Cubans into something else.

Granma has titled its reconstruction of those events "August 5, 1994: the Great Victory of the People." The protesters are described as "lumpen," "mob," or manipulated groups; those who came to defend the government, on the other hand, embody the "Cuban people."

The word thus resolves an uncomfortable contradiction.

If Cubans protest against the system and other Cubans are mobilized to prevent it, it becomes difficult to maintain the image of unanimity. However, if the former cease to be discursively referred to as "the people," the contradiction disappears.

The 11J once again revealed the mechanism

Almost three decades later, something similar happened.

On July 11, 2021, thousands of citizens took to the streets in numerous locations across the country. In response to the protests, Miguel Díaz-Canel called upon "all revolutionaries" to confront them and uttered a phrase that would become associated with that day: "The order for combat has been given".

Later, the official account assured that "the people responded" and defended the Revolution. The choice of words is revealing.

Those who were protesting were also Cubans. But the "people" in the government's narrative were those who had come out to defend the system.

Political disagreement does not destroy the unanimity and unity proclaimed by the power. It is enough to symbolically displace the dissident from the category that supposedly represents the nation.

A popular will that declares itself irrevocable

The resource is not limited to moments of crisis. It also supports one of the legal pillars of the Cuban system: the irrevocability of socialism.

The Constitution establishes that sovereignty resides "inalienably in the people." However, the same Constitution declares the socialist system to be irrevocable and defines the PCC — the only legally recognized leading force — as the "superior political leading force of society and the State."

The official press justifies this apparent tension by once again appealing to the will of the people.

Granma has presented the irrevocability of socialism as the result of "a popular decision" and managed to summarize the argument with an almost explicit headline: "The Sacred and the Untouchable: the Will of the People."

A paradox then emerges.

A specific manifestation of popular will serves to declare that the system is irrevocable, but subsequent generations do not have a competitive electoral mechanism among parties that would allow them to verify whether they wish to maintain it or replace it.

The will of the people thus takes on a peculiar quality: it can legitimize the permanence of the system, but the system itself restricts the avenues for that will to be expressed politically in the opposite direction.

The perfect shield

There probably lies the effectiveness of the word.

«People» allows erasing the boundaries between society, State, Party, and Revolution.

The Army is "the uniformed people." The mobilizations called by the power are "the warring people." Those who defend the government during a protest are "the people." The PCC presents itself as the organized expression of the nation. And the continuity of socialism is based on "the will of the people."

The result is a formidable discursive shield.

When the system is questioned, those in power may frame the conflict not as a dispute between citizens with differing political agendas, nor as a defense of specific institutions, but as an assault against a supposedly unanimous national will.

And when a part of society contradicts that unanimity, language has other categories available for it: “counter-revolutionaries,” “mercenaries,” “lumpen,” “antisocial,” “annexationists,” “Plattists,” or “confused”.

Thus, the fundamental subject of the narrative remains intact: a revolutionary, socialist, united people ready for sacrifice.

That is why the phrase that MINFAR has just revived from Fidel Castro matters.

It does not merely assert that the Armed Forces are ready to defend the country. It also does not speak of communist militants willing to fight. It attributes heroism to the "people" and, implicitly, the human cost of a potential confrontation.

It is an ancient and extraordinarily functional formula: when the regime needs to demonstrate that it is not defending itself, it puts the "people" in front.