IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Page 113

governments of the most powerful imperialist state that has ever existed; it has
demonstrated its ability to transform the
nation and create an entirely new and
just society, and is irrevocable: Cuba
will never revert to capitalism.” This
Article is part of the political regime’s
keystones and is assumed to affect the
remaining structure of the State and society, as well as the relationship between
both of them with each other, and of
both of them with the citizenry. Thus,
we are talking about the seminal character they have and how specific constitutional concepts produce the Law and
political acts. As far as the contractual
nature of the Constitution and political
legitimacy are concerned, this is fundamental because it regulates the basic
issue of sovereignty, defines its essential
source, and constructs a sort of pyramid
that marks the possible and legitimate
relationship between the citizenry and
the State, via society. It also affects the
rest of the constitutional articles and
legality of acts both by the State and the
citizenry. This Article should be concisely, briefly and clearly delimited to express the essential source of legitimacy
and law, which might seem clear enough
in its first paragraph, but the remaining
paragraphs are in excess. They refer to
elements that have no natural tie to the
principal source of legitimacy and sovereignty; strictly, they limit any clear
exercise of them so long as they fix a
type of order that can be established by
the sovereign that said Article theoretically and constitutionally acknowledges.
It introduces mechanisms, both in prin-

ciple and naturally, of defensive violence
by which political and civil resolutions
of conflicts are achieved via mechanisms
that the sovereign may legitimately can
and should establish. What is yet more
serious as far as constitutional terms and
techniques are concerned, the Article
surreptitiously introduces a different and
more superior source of legitimacy and
source of law that is assumed to be
above the citizenry—its appeal to a preestablished, revolutionary order that
chronologically precedes the Constitution itself, takes sovereignty away from
the State or establishes its sovereignty
around its very existence, and not outside of it, as would be the case in a modern state with constitutional order. Thus,
the citizenry’s sovereignty is destroyed
and ends up being an aberration of all
constitutional legitimacy: the sovereign
is not a sovereign who changes the order
or regime that he, as sovereign, gave
himself. The Articles contains a double
contradiction: in objecto and in subjecto.
It is in objecto because the sovereign
denies himself in his possible acts and in
subjecto because the sovereign divides
into an ephemeral entity and a superior
who has rights that in essence are denied
to him. In the end, the sovereign ceases
existing in the very Article that recognizes his supreme legitimacy. This analysis requires and can be further developed, but it is important to point this out
here, to show the connection between
#OTRO18’s basic proposal, and to reveal how important it is for Consenso
Constitucional to emphasize the need for
consistent reforms to our legal and con-