DATA OF INTEREST

GUEST:
Oscar Grandío Moráguez

HOST:
Juliana Rabelo


Synopsis:

The term totalitarianism has not been accepted by a good part of academia and people, in general, when referring to the post-1959 Cuban regime. However, despite variations in the theoretical points of view and analytical construction of social scientists, the post-1959 Cuban regime can be classified as a classic totalitarian regime.

Examples of definitions that fit the case of Cuba: everything is within the state and outside the state there is nothing legal or spiritual (Mussolini); terror is a defining element of the state combined with high popular support (Arendt); a totalitarian regime as 6 defining characteristics: 1. a single mass party based on 2. a single ideology which exercises 3. the absolute monopoly of force and 4. the control of information, 5. central control of the economy and 6. perpetuates its power using an omnipotent secret police (Friedrich and Brzenski); unity and domination of the group characterized as totalitarian that presupposes an absolute belief in the mission of this group defined from a political perspective that is quasi-religious, meaning that they materialize the necessity of domination of a single party that excludes, in the social and the political, the possibility of circulation of groups other than those who wield power (Waldemar Gurian); a regime that defines an exclusive and more or less intellectually elaborate autonomy with which a group in power, a governing leader and a single party to serve as support, utilizes this as a base for their politics and legitimizing maneuvers, providing a utopia that is unattainable, to do so encouraging, demanding and channeling civilian mobilization through a vast network of mandatory organizations directed by a single party and which devalue parivate life (Juan José Linz).

For this the Cuban totalitarian elite has constructed narratives divorced from reality and on this base they construct an anti meritocratic and anticompetitive totalitarian control with a blind faith in their own ability to govern. The loss of legitimacy, the fact that the elite only maintain their power through repression and terror, the regime´s exhaustion of all the resources of cooptation, the loss of a charismatic leader, the impossibility of monopolizing the channels of communication with the public, the existence of an ample artistic, intellectual, popular dissenting public sector serves for the Cuban population to stop living in what Havel called living within the lie, they are conditions that announce the process of detotalitarianization. The leap to living in truth and its public expression reveal the possibility of a different life.

How to exercise dissent in an efficient way to combat authoritarianism? We all have the same capacity to change the system, it is not a question of a few visionaries. Cuba is totalitarian, but Cubans are now exercising our political opportunities both within and outside Cuba.


Bio:

Oscar Grandío Moráguez is a historian with a degree in International Politics from the ISRI (Cuba) with a Master´s in Asian and African Studies from the Colegio de México and a Doctorate in History from York University (Canada). He has taught at universities in Canada, the United States and Mexico. He is a columnist at Hypermedia Magazine writing about the dictatorship, democratic transition and racism in Cuba.

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Totalitarian Cuban Elite vs. Living in Truth

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