IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 153

The analysis and enlightenment of this
contradiction would have significant consequences for the entire process of rebuilding
the State and implementing reforms of the
constitution and the other laws. How is it
possible that Cuban citizens can exercise
power directly and have neither legal powers
nor recognized mechanisms to reform the
constitution, which is an expression of their
sovereign power? From here it is possible to
bring forward the concept of invented space
as a direct exercise of the sovereign power.
A second argument reads thus: if we see the
constitution as a tree of logical branches,
where its articles follow certain sequence for
generating power and rights, then Article
137 closes and shields a state power that is
not defined in any of the preceding articles
on the source of legitimacy and popular
sovereignty. The constitutional shielding of
the State does not stemmed from the sovereignty in the constitutional order. All the
constitutional shields are mounted further on
without logical connection to the sovereignty, but rather to limit it and to deny it. Thusly this article is unconstitutional since it
takes certain distance from the exercise of
sovereignty. The latter can be exercised not
only directly, but also by proxy. Indeed, the
deputies elected by the people to the National Assembly cannot represent the ideas of
the people on changing a system that supposedly was born from the mandate of the
people.
The dilemma of the political actors
These approaches to the articles that provides shielding to the State are basic for a
constitutional amendment, whether total or
partial. However, the Cuban political dynamics brings into view a general dilemma
for all political actors. Such a dilemma
emerges from the standard praxis and the

historical path of evolution or change, running from the facts to the law, from the
political reality to the constitutional and
legal structures. This development is interesting and reflects three key issues of the
Cuban state in historical context. The political will and actions were never built on the
basis offered by the bureaucratic institutions
and the very constitution. The state practices
were marked by the needs of government
and founded on a self-styled and untouchable Revolution as source of law. Without
institutions there was neither a yardstick for
measuring the effectiveness of the public
policies nor a way to establish accountability, legality, and action areas. The state
simply acted and turned more complicated
the dynamics in all the spheres of social life.
In the destructive contrast between the
"spontaneous" actions of the regime and the
reality, the political practices are undertaken
as a matter of fact, not of law. Thus politics
inevitably leads to urgencies instead of a
series of acts required by law and to be
contrasted with the law. That’s the way of
acting by the time of political deadlock and
it’s actually way to start a political opening:
the usual practice —not the law— as the
main criterion for action. The constitution is
divorced from social reality. Nobody can
comply with its articles to have a social,
economic, and cultural life. An essential
political fact explains the dynamics of revolution and power in the last 56 years: the
State tolerates marginal illegality as an
instrument of survival of all social actors.
The social cost is the sacrifice of the institutional order, but it also fuels the need to
adjust both the institutions and the constitution to the reality in our country.

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