IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 74

vision, a community of freedom-loving
people really showing the will to replace
totalitarianism with democracy! But
how is such a national revival to be
achieved? Here lies the main challenge
for the Cuban democratic opposition.
And it is not only to resist, on a daily
basis, all of their repressive action from
the “ancient regime” still in power, as
some of its courageous leaders seem to
believe. It is to turn itself into a power
capable of opening the way for Cubans
to move from their bleak presence to a
better future and propose a realistic
scenario on how to get out of the current
stalemate. The problem is that the Cuban
democratic opposition has always been
highly fragmented and consisted of a
number of competing factions. In spite
of all sorts of calls for unification made
in the past – and now again and again - it
has not been able to do so. It has not yet
offered a realistic program of democratic
transformation acceptable for all Cubans
as a viable political alternative to the
current state of public matters on the
island.
4. The relationship with the United
States: a historical problem or a historical opportunity?
The persisting disunity within of the
Cuban “parallel polis” has manifold
reasons and this phenomenon certainly
calls for a detailed and historically informed analysis. Such an enormous task
obviously exceeds the scope of this short
text. There is, however, a key external
aspect contributing significantly to the
current state of matters that must be
reminded here: the complicated relation-

ship between Cuba and the United States
which has been developing throughout
the 20th century. The thing is that this
relationship has always been, for obvious reasons, highly asymmetrical: on the
one side the United States,