Author: Translating Cuba

of a historical continuity that the communist state sought to sever. This preservation of identity is essential because democratic transitions are not only institutional transformations; they are also acts of national reconstruction. A society emerging from totalitarianism must recover its own historical narrative after decades of ideological manipulation.

For this reason, the 1940 Constitution represents a uniquely appropriate constitutional vehicle for Cuba’s democratic transition. The 1940 Constitution was the last legitimate constitutional text produced by a freely elected constitutional assembly representing Cuba’s major political forces and social sectors. It was the supreme expression of Cuba’s republican era and embodied the constitutional aspirations of the nation before the destruction of democratic governance. Unlike the Castro-Communist constitutional framework imposed after 1959, the 1940 Constitution emerged from popular sovereignty rather than revolutionary authority.

A democratic transition after communism must confront the past. This includes accountability for abuses, recognition of victims, restitution and reparations, institutional reform, and guarantees that dictatorial rule does not return. These are the essential components of transitional justice. Yet democratic reconstruction requires more than dismantling the structures of dictatorship. It also requires reconnecting a society with the legitimate historical foundations that preceded tyranny.

The restoration and modernization of the 1940 Constitution accomplishes both objectives. It provides a constitutional bridge between Cuba’s past and future. It allows Cubans to reconnect with their authentic republican tradition rather than accept the historical narrative constructed by Castro-Communism, which portrayed pre-1959 Cuba as a failed society requiring total ideological replacement. The regime attempted to redefine Cuban history around itself, treating everything before 1959 as morally illegitimate. A democratic Cuba must reject this historical rupture and recover the broader national story that existed before totalitarian rule.

Critics often misunderstand the proposed use of the 1940 Constitution by assuming that it would be applied exactly as written in 1940. That is not the proposal. Transitional constitutionalism requires flexibility. The interim governing authority would adopt the 1940 Constitution as the legitimate constitutional foundation of the transition while immediately suspending most provisions. During the transition period—ideally lasting several years—the country would be governed through emergency democratic decrees designed to stabilize institutions, restore rights, implement transitional justice, and prepare for elections.

The fundamental rights protections contained in Title IV of the 1940 text would provide an immediate constitutional anchor. These provisions include equality before the law, protection against discrimination, habeas corpus, due process guarantees, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, protection of private property, and the right of citizens to resist tyranny. These principles remain foundational to any democratic order.

Other sections of the 1940 Constitution also contain valuable institutional mechanisms worthy of preservation. Title V provides important protections for family, education, and culture. Titles XV and XVI establish meaningful municipal and provincial autonomy, limiting excessive centralization. Title XIV recognizes the importance of judicial independence and judicial review. Title XVII includes significant mechanisms of financial oversight through the Tribunal de Cuentas, a powerful anti-corruption institution capable of monitoring public finances.

After free, fair, and competitive elections, a democratically elected parliament could convene a constituent assembly responsible for modernizing the constitutional text. The resulting document would incorporate contemporary democratic standards, economic realities, and institutional safeguards. It would then be submitted to the Cuban people through a national referendum. The purpose of preserving the 1940 Constitution during transition is therefore not nostalgia; it is continuity, legitimacy, and national reconciliation.

The alternatives present serious problems. One option would be to retain and merely reform the current Castro-Communist constitutional text. This would be a profound mistake. That document emerged from totalitarian rule and lacks democratic legitimacy. Reforming it would risk preserving the legal foundations of the very system that transitional justice must dismantle.

The second option would be to create an entirely new constitution from nothing. While this may appear neutral, it would repeat one of the central errors of Castro-Communism: severing Cuba from its historical development. A new constitution without historical continuity would suggest that democratic Cuba has no roots, no inheritance, and no institutional memory. That would echo the revolutionary claim that the nation began anew in 1959.

Cuba is not a democratic orphan. It possessed an imperfect but functioning republic that was violently interrupted, not naturally exhausted or historically discredited. Its constitutional traditions, civic institutions, political culture, and national identity existed before the revolutionary rupture and survived despite decades of ideological transformation imposed from above. The democratic project after Castro-Communism should not invent a nation; it should restore and renew one. The Cuban democratic transition should recognize that Cuba’s future legitimacy will depend not only on building new institutions but also on reconnecting those institutions to the historical memory of the Cuban people. This includes embracing the constitutional ideals that preceded communist tyranny. A free Cuba must recover the understanding that democracy is not an import but a national inheritance.

Some objections to the 1940 Constitution deserve consideration. Some mistakenly describe it as a socialist constitution. This reflects confusion between socialism and social democracy or Christian democratic traditions. The constitutional assembly of 1939 included communists, but they represented only a minority. The document was primarily shaped by Cuba’s mainstream political traditions: liberals, conservatives, social democrats, and other democratic forces. Its social provisions reflected the constitutional trends of the twentieth century, not communist ideology.

Others argue that the Constitution is outdated. Age alone, however, does not determine constitutional value. Many successful democracies continue to rely on historic constitutional texts because legitimacy often comes from continuity as much as from contemporary drafting. The strongest criticism is that the 1940 Constitution is excessively detailed and attempts to regulate areas that modern constitutions typically leave to legislation. This criticism has merit. It is precisely why modernization is necessary. The objective is not to preserve every article but to preserve the constitutional lineage.

The most important question is not whether Cuba should return mechanically to 1940. The question is whether a free Cuba should reconnect with its own constitutional heritage. The answer should be yes. The 1940 Constitution offers something essential after decades of kleptocratic communist dictatorship: legitimacy, historical continuity, and healing. By adapting this historic document to modern democratic realities and submitting it to popular approval, Cuba can begin reconstruction not as a nation searching for an identity, but as a nation reclaiming one.

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Julio M. Shiling is a political scientist, writer, columnist, lecturer, media commentator, and director of Patria de Martí and The CubanAmerican Voice. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. He is a member of The American Political Science Association, The PEN Club (Cuban Writers in Exile Chapter) and the Academy of Cuban History in Exile.

commerce, transportation, banking, real estate, logistics, and foreign investment.

The result was not a free market but a military-commercial empire. Foreign investors entering Cuba were not investing in Cuban workers, Cuban entrepreneurs, or a Cuban middle class. They were entering partnerships with enterprises controlled by the armed forces and aligned with the Communist Party. The revenues generated by these arrangements flowed overwhelmingly into the coffers of the regime while ordinary Cubans remained excluded from meaningful ownership, independent labor organization, political participation, and economic opportunity.

For years, international corporations willingly participated in this arrangement. Hotel chains signed management agreements with military-owned tourism companies. Mining firms entered joint ventures with state monopolies. Financial institutions facilitated transactions that sustained the regime’s hard-currency needs. Shipping companies moved goods through military-controlled infrastructure. In doing so, many of these corporations became indispensable components of the economic system that preserved one-party rule.

Their participation carried consequences far beyond commerce. The Cuban labor system has long violated the most basic principles embodied in international labor conventions. Workers employed through foreign ventures had their wages appropriated by the state, lacked independent representation, and were denied the right to negotiate freely with employers. While corporations enjoyed access to a captive labor force, the Cuban people remained deprived of fundamental rights. The profits generated by these arrangements helped sustain the very institutions responsible for political repression, censorship, arbitrary detention, and the denial of civil liberties.

This is why Executive Order 14404 has proven so disruptive. By imposing secondary sanctions on foreign entities operating in strategic sectors of the Cuban economy and on those doing business with military-controlled enterprises, the order transformed Cuba from a manageable commercial risk into a potentially devastating financial liability. Access to the American financial system, international banking networks, and global markets suddenly became more valuable than continued participation in Cuba’s shrinking economy.

The sanctions did not stop at foreign corporations. Washington also expanded, on June 4, its focus to the regime’s ruling families and the institutional pillars that have long sustained Castro- Communist power. The Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Miguel Díaz-Canel and his wife, Lis Cuesta Peraza; Manuel Anido Cuesta, Díaz-Canel’s stepson; and Alejandro Castro Espín and Raúl Alejandro Castro Calis, respectively the son and grandson of Raúl Castro. The measures freeze assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibit transactions with American citizens, companies, and financial institutions. In doing so, they signal a growing willingness to target not merely individual officeholders but the broader network of relatives, intermediaries, and beneficiaries that has surrounded the ruling elite for decades.

Equally significant has been the decision to sanction the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and its travel agency Amistur Cuba S.A., as well as Minera la Victoria S.A. These entities have served as critical instruments of military control, neighborhood surveillance, international influence operations, regime financing, and political mobilization. By targeting organizations rather than solely individuals, the sanctions strike at the institutional infrastructure through which the dictatorship has exercised power. In the context of a future democratic transition, such measures reinforce an important principle: accountability must ultimately extend to individual figures, as well as the structures that enabled, financed, and perpetuated systematic repression.

The reaction to Executive Order 14404 was predictable. Before the June 5 deadline for sanctions exposure, a growing list of prominent foreign companies announced their intention to withdraw, suspend operations, reduce their presence, or distance themselves from the regime. Spain’s Meliá, long the largest foreign hotel operator in Cuba, began winding down management agreements affecting numerous properties. Iberostar followed with similar measures. Canada’s Blue Diamond Resorts announced its departure. Indonesia’s Archipelago International ended its operations. In the mining sector, Canada’s Sherritt International, one of the regime’s most important foreign partners, suspended direct participation and began winding down operations.

Shipping giants and financial intermediaries likewise moved to limit their exposure, while payment networks connected to Cuba experienced significant disruptions.

This exodus reveals an essential truth. The Castro regime’s post-Soviet economic model was never self-sustaining. It depended upon a continuous inflow of foreign capital, expertise, branding, technology, and legitimacy. Once those partners began departing, the vulnerabilities of the entire system became visible. The military-entrepreneurial class cultivated through decades of Perfeccionamiento Empresarial and consolidated under GAESA has now been deprived of much of its foreign investment capacity. As a consequence, the regime’s access to hard currency will inevitably suffer.

The significance of these developments extends far beyond immediate economic losses. What is unfolding today is the progressive dismantling of the institutional machinery that allowed Castro- Communism to survive after the fall of the Soviet bloc. The network of military enterprises, privileged monopolies, foreign partnerships, and state-controlled labor arrangements that enriched a narrow ruling elite is beginning to unravel.

That process carries profound implications for Cuba’s future transition to democracy. Transitional justice is not merely about prosecuting individual officials. It also requires exposing and dismantling the structures that enabled totalitarian rule. The economic empire built around GAESA and its foreign partners will inevitably become a subject of historical clarification, legal scrutiny, and public accountability once democratization begins.

Many of the corporations now rushing toward the exits would prefer to portray themselves as innocent business actors. Yet the historical record will show that numerous foreign firms knowingly entered partnerships with institutions controlled by a dictatorship that systematically violated labor rights, civil liberties, and human dignity. While responsibility for these abuses rests first and foremost with the regime itself, those who profited from the system cannot entirely escape moral responsibility for helping sustain it.

The rapid discombobulation of this military-commercial complex demonstrates that sanctions, when properly designed and vigorously enforced, can achieve strategic objectives that many once considered impossible. By targeting the regime’s actual sources of financial power rather than merely its political symbols, Executive Order 14404 has struck at the heart of the post- Soviet survival model that kept Castro-Communism afloat for more than three decades.

History may question why a policy sharing the clarity of these seminal actions seeking to deny funds to a criminal regime, was not exercised decades earlier. Nonetheless, it is better late than never. Ironically, on the day internationally celebrated as Workers’ Day, President Trump delivered a measure that directly challenged a system built upon the exploitation of Cuban labor and the enrichment of a privileged military elite. Whether intentional or coincidental, it may prove to have been one of the most consequential gifts ever bestowed upon Cuban workers. It delivered a decisive blow against the financial machinery that profited from their oppression and represented a significant step toward the day when Cuba can finally begin the difficult but necessary work of democratic reconstruction and transitional justice.

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endorsement. The system that he, along with his older brother, concocted oversaw the killing, torture, and dehumanization of thousands of Cubans. In the Latin American context, by way of their Marxist revolution export business, the victims list grows to the hundreds of thousands. Raúl Castro’s physical body may be decaying, but the malicious soul that drove those crimes has never changed.

As we remember and honor Pedro Luis Boitel this Monday, the recent indictment against Raúl Castro stands as a fitting prelude. It reinforces a vital truth. Justice may be delayed for decades, but it must not be ignored. Boitel was killed 54 years ago. The Brothers to the Rescue volunteers were murdered 30 years ago. In both cases, the perpetrators bear full responsibility. These anniversaries remind us that heinous crimes against humanity carry no statute of limitations.

The convergence of these two dates carries deep significance for the Cuban people. As the prospect of a free and democratic Cuba grows stronger, the nation must consciously embrace the imperative of justice. A future democratic government—or any transitional authority, even if temporarily operated by the United States—should place comprehensive transitional justice at the very cornerstone of its mission. This includes truth-seeking, accountability for the killers and torturers, reparations for victims and their families, and the moral restoration of a nation long scarred by repression.

The memory of Pedro Luis Boitel demands nothing less. His death was not in vain if it continues to inspire the pursuit of justice for all who suffered under the Castro regime. The indictment of Raúl Castro should be celebrated not merely as a legal action but as a powerful signal that the long era of impunity is coming to an end. Cubans both on the island and in exile must internalize this message. Justice is not optional. It is essential for genuine national reconciliation and the construction of a truly free society. Let us properly honor Boitel by committing ourselves to the idea that no crime this monstrous can remain forever unpunished. Justice delayed for more than half a century is still justice. This is the case, even if it is long overdue.

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was openly defiant and militant, sounding increasingly similar to the revolutionary absolutism and anti-Western hostility associated with the Iranian ayatollah regime, one of Havana’s closest ideological and geopolitical partners. This was not a workers’ celebration. It was a regime fortification exercise.

The communist dictatorship explicitly organized the May Day mobilization within the framework of the newly declared “Year of Defense Preparedness” for 2026. The Castroist regime has announced weekly military exercises, civil defense operations, and plans approved by the National Defense Council for a transition to a wartime footing in the event of conflict or internal instability. The atmosphere surrounding the parade reflected precisely that mentality. It is a state preparing not for prosperity or reform, but for confrontation and survival.

Military personnel, Ministry of the Interior (MININT) officers, intelligence agents, rapid- response brigades, and uniformed security forces maintained a heavy presence throughout the event. The symbolism was unmistakable. The regime increasingly governs Cuba, not as a confident political system, but as an entrenched security apparatus managing a population it fundamentally distrusts. The omnipresent deployment of coercive forces transformed what the dictatorship claimed was a celebration of workers into a demonstration of state intimidation and internal control. Rather than projecting revolutionary vitality, the spectacle exposed a government whose primary political instinct is surveillance, containment, and preparedness against its citizenry.

At the same time, the dictatorship attempted to manufacture legitimacy through mass political coercion. Havana triumphantly announced that more than 6.2 million signatures had been collected for the “Mi Firma por la Patria” (“My Signature for the Homeland”) campaign, a regime-driven initiative supposedly demonstrating national support for Cuban “sovereignty” and resistance to foreign pressure. In a totalitarian system, signatures gathered through workplaces, schools, party committees, unions controlled by the state, neighborhood surveillance networks, and government institutions cannot meaningfully be interpreted as free political expression. Participation in such campaigns is inseparable from intimidation, social pressure, and fear of retaliation. In Cuba, refusing to cooperate with state mobilizations can carry consequences ranging from professional marginalization to harassment, interrogation, or loss of opportunities controlled by the state.

The regime intended to project strength. Instead, it revealed insecurity. While Havana staged ideological rituals and militarized pageantry, Washington moved decisively in the opposite direction. On May 1, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order titled Imposing Sanctions on Those Responsible for Repression in Cuba and Threats to U.S. National Security and Foreign Policy. The order represents another comprehensive sanction charter directed at the Cuban regime. It significantly expands the legal, financial, and diplomatic pressure against Castro-Communism.

The executive order declares that the actions and policies of the Castro government continue to constitute an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and foreign policy. It further states that the regime’s conduct is “repugnant to the moral and political values of free and democratic societies.” The sanctions provisions are sweeping in scope. Under Section 2, the United States can block all property and interests in property under U.S. jurisdiction belonging to foreign individuals or entities operating in strategic sectors of the Cuban economy, including defense, energy, mining, metals, financial services, and security. The order specifically targets not only officials of the Castro government but also individuals and entities acting on behalf of the regime, those materially assisting it, and those providing financial, technological, or logistical support.

The order further authorizes sanctions against persons complicit in serious human rights abuses or corruption connected to communist Cuba, including expropriation of private assets, misappropriation of public resources, bribery, and political profiteering by regime officials. Even adult family members of sanctioned individuals may be designated. The message is unmistakable: the United States intends to target not merely isolated actors, but the broader ecosystem sustaining the dictatorship. By extending liability beyond formal state officials to financial enablers, intermediaries, and beneficiaries of regime corruption, the order seeks to penetrate the patronage networks that have long insulated Cuba’s ruling elite from meaningful accountability.

The executive order also dramatically raises pressure on international financial institutions. Foreign banks facilitating significant transactions for sanctioned Cuban individuals or entities may themselves face severe penalties, including restrictions on correspondent banking access in the United States or the blocking of assets under U.S. jurisdiction. These secondary sanctions substantially increase the financial risks associated with doing business with the Cuban regime. In practical terms, the measures are designed to further isolate Havana from global financial networks and deter foreign actors from serving as economic lifelines for the dictatorship.

Additionally, the order imposes a travel ban on foreign nationals tied to sanctionable activities connected to the Cuban government, suspending unrestricted immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States for designated individuals. It also prohibits transactions designed to evade sanctions and authorizes aggressive enforcement under existing emergency powers legislation. The inclusion of immigration restrictions underscores that participation in repression and corruption in Cuba may now carry not only financial consequences, but also personal and diplomatic isolation from the United States.

Thus, May Day 2026 became far more than a symbolic holiday. In Havana, the regime attempted to choreograph revolutionary permanence through coercion, militarization, and ideological spectacle. It visibly displayed a deep-rooted fear of its population. In Washington, the United States formally intensified its economic and diplomatic campaign against the structures of Castro-Communist repression. Two cities, two systems, and two entirely different conceptions of political legitimacy.

One clings to power through surveillance, compulsory mobilization, and security-state control. The other increasingly signals that the Cuban dictatorship’s repression, corruption, and destabilizing conduct will face mounting consequences. The juxtaposition of Havana’s militarized choreography and Washington’s expanding sanctions policy underscored the growing collision between a system struggling to preserve totalitarian permanence and an American political environment becoming progressively less willing to tolerate or normalize its existence. Havana’s pathetic May Day spectacle revealed their inability to effectively orchestrate anything convincing. It also underscored their pathological refusal to negotiate themselves out of power. The U.S. must now seize the moment and take its legitimate national security concerns to another level.

Author: Julio M. Shiling

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