IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 3 ENGLISH | Page 52

Another consideration refers to the identity of citizens in the Constitution; it relates to their participation in the conceptualization of the project itself. A negative methodological focus shed better

we would run the risk of what happened in 1940
happening once again. The interests of the same
parties that made the Constitution possible
blocked the following, necessary step: a vote on a

Santiago de las Vegas, Havana
light on the arguments of those who propose a
new Constitution.
To dismiss the Constitutions of 1976 or 1940 as
points of departure for constitutional change
could be understood clearly if one takes into account that both are very distant from today’s everyday Cubans, just as the nineteenth-century or
1901 might be. Certainly one sees more citizens
interacting with the 1976 version than anytime
before that, but there is no strong social tendency
to justify the idea of there being a solid legal culture that would be difficult to eliminate and redirect in new constitutional directions.
Our lack of judicial and legal culture is a vacuum;
this vacuum allows us to start from zero, practically. This, in turn, would allow for society to develop a sense of the constitutional, judicial and legal content that a Constitution would defend, promote and guarantee, e.g., individual rights and a
State of Law. A new Constitution presupposes a
new Constituting body, an important point because political parties shouldn’t be able to mediate it. If not, the process would be poisoned and

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group of laws that would have made the Constitution effective. The past offers us lessons, but
also shows us behavior patterns that destroy important processes.
Religious plurality is a primary motivation for
those who promote the New Constitutionalism.
Given that religious people were permitted to participate in the process, they highlighted the need
for a ‘freedom of religion’ law that guarantees religious rights and guarantees equal treatment for
all religions within or without the State. Some remembered the importance of that law, but neither
the lay State’s acknowledgment nor its declaration, nor even its pronouncement against religiously motivated discrimination, is enough. That
is the current situation in Cuba with its current
Constitution. We need a positive law that makes
absolutely clear religious rights and that these
rights are regulated and protected.
Another extreme essential for the nature of the future Constitution is the emergence of cultural pluralism from religious pluralism. The problem
with all our past constitutions, including the 1976