IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Page 134

Current law reflects the behavioral patterns our society has been taking on”4.
Carlos Rafael lucidly explains that the
legality that was supposedly being implemented was nothing more than the
definitive shaping of the state of things,
in a series of articles, that by then were
orchestrated in everyday existence. The
old communist intellectual foresaw that
it would harder to limit functionaries’
benefits than get citizens to adjust to the
new laws. About this, he said: “Yet, we
will have to make an effort subject not
the people, but administrative functionaries to a close authoritative space that
takes the place the relative autonomy
with which they exercised the State’s
power till now.” It is not possible to
know if in saying “subject…the functionaries” Carlos Rafael Rodríguez had
any intention of reducing the laws regarding control of the government and,
principally, of Fidel Castro, who by then
was the only real political power in Cuba. The 1976 Constitution, with its incipient unification of powers and subordination of legislative and judicial bodies, that is, the State Council and its
president, did nothing more that create
an administrative structure that a simple
power pyramid. It looked more like the
tip of an arrow on whose point was the
only true power figure: Fidel Alejandro
Castro Ruz. No law limited the possible
permanence of the Comandante en Jefe
as the State’s head. In addition, he was
given the Cuban Communist Party’s
highest leadership position, also indefinitely. This was the only political organization legally recognized by the country

and the one to which the State’s entire
structure was subordinated. It was clear
that individual hegemony that Fidel
Alejandro Castro had achieved during
the revolution’s first fifteen years was
being consecrated via a legal convenience. The fate of political rights between 1959 and 1976, as well as the
transfer of citizen hegemony to a small
number of persons, all this while power
was being clearly identified as a patrimony, established extremely dissimilar
social practices. Socially, citizens had to
assume attitudes whose goal was assimilation into a form of public behavior that
left them without the power to make
political determinations or mobilization
systems and surveys regarding group
preferences. This also reduced responsibility regarding events or processes in
which citizens had not participated when
being proposed, and whose development
depended, in great measure, on the will
of foreign people. The results of these
events and processes did not benefit citizens at all. Essential social elements like
cooperation and the generation of common projects kept being important in
areas that interested people, but it was
precisely these areas that noticeably diminished. “Getting used to something” is
a concept that some social scientists
have situated before the actual formation
of an institution5. Human beings develop
certain convenient practices that, once
socially interconnected, give way to
norms and practices that end up being
institutionalized. Given the fact Cuba’s,
pre-1959, republican system was dismantled, and the lack of satisfactory

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