DATA OF INTEREST

GUEST:
Fernando Ruiz

HOST:
Juliana Rabelo


Synopsis:

Fernando Ruiz talks about the persistence of fighters for democracy in Cuba from day one of the beginning of the dictatorship as a sign of victory. After accompanying the experience of the construction of democracy in Cuba, he observes that there is a democratic humus, the seeds of democracy under the roof of the dictatorship. He warns that the democratic future that will arrive is conditioned by the forms used today by dissidents at the bases of collective practices: both political and cultural.

He introduces the concepts of duplication of society (the battle is not only political, in the partisan sense, but rather it happens in every micro-space in society), micro rights (microsteps so that the arrival of democracy can come increasingly close) and public standing (capacity to speak and be heard both internally and externally. The new spaces of sociability already announce a political change.

Other ideas talked about here include the new institutionality that is consolidating itself and can help to generate a greater solidity of the dissident process. He recommends that the figures, the referents of the dissidents must be increasingly subordinated to ideas, organizations, movements that transcend people. How to begin to further knit together individual dissidence with collective work? It is about communicating with the rest of Cuban society, horizontal connection, looking for the strength of weak ties with an agenda of proximity and care. The democracy in action and interaction that is being promoted is a regime of care for others and those around you. We need bottom-up discourses that stir up old-fashioned discourses through renovated ones like the artists.

At this point it is much more clear that the opposition isn’́t between left and right but rather between democracy and dictatorship; and that the revolution has nothing left. Cuba is no longer a factory of revolutionary ideas for the world. This memory must be disconnected from the support for the effective and real construction of a democratic future.


Bio:

Fernando Ruiz is the author of a book about independent journalism in Cuba. He was imprisoned by agents of the political police in Cuba, who confiscated all of the recordings for his investigation.

For Ruiz it is not hard to define what the debate surrounding Cuba is: “the debate isn´t between left and right but rather between democracy or dictatorship,” he affirms, adding: “The process of democratization in Latin America has not concluded, and Cuba is the mental limit of the democratization of the Latin American left.”

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