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Constructing a Convenient
Legality
The Institutionalization of Castroism at the Beginning of the Republican
Void After 1959
Boris González Arenas
Historian and filmmaker
Probidad blog
Havana, Cuba

T

he narrow framework for political rights that was instituted with
the year 1959’s “Triumph of the
Revolution” was not a consequence of
the creation of a legal order different
from the republican one, with its 1940
Constitution as a formidable ruling document. Instead, it turned into a system,
as a result of it being dismantled. That
system has survived till the present day
and went through a process of natural
shape taking during the years prior to the
so-called institutionalization of the Constitution, in 1976. It is not till the Socialist Constitution of 1976, and the laws
that followed, that it became definitively
consecrated in legal texts. The so-called
“Year of Institutionalization” is not a
break, but rather a logical moment in a
process that has always had the concentration of power as its primary objective.
Said system created a favorable social
order that was able to consecrate itself in
the midst of multiple mobilizations and
subjects’ disempowerment in the face of
power. Yet, it also generated citizen dis-

enfranchisement, which threatens the
nation as a shared space.
The blocking of the participation during the first moments after the revolutionary triumph of 1959
A totalitarian society is not established
right away. The history of the revolution,
Castroism, and the Cuban government,
the difference between all of them having been muddied for almost 60 years,
clearly show the effort it requires to institute totalitarian practices within democratic practices and institutionalism.
One of the first, essential aspects for this
transformation was to devalue citizens’
mechanisms for democratic control, and
impose less clear or contrastable vehicles of mobilization and ratification.
These were essentially public mobilizations, marches, and political talks. Carlos
Rafael Rodríguez was a communist intellectual who knew how to survive
purges Castroism carried out in the heart
of his party and finally meet death with
his political career intact. This is how he

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