separate proposals on what they want for Cuba. There are already thousands of ballots accumulated, which practically operate as a national survey. That meeting marked the milestone from which the model of Deliberative Democracy ceased to be an encouraging promise to become an indispensable tool. Since the present has been reluctant to advance towards the future, the future must come to the rescue. That meeting in FIU was the appropriate preface to the fourth event the same year in the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Puerto Rico and the
Caribbean. It featured personalities from both islands and the United States, including Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives. Thanks to this event, I personally became convinced that the model was entering in a stage of fermentation among Cubans. Maybe it happened without having been noticed by the regime, or the latter is unable to prevent the spreading of the model. Anyway, the dictatorship could have finally met its match.
Fruitful exchange with the representative Jose Javier Rodriguez( center)
Ultimately the fifth meeting took place as a catalyst for new developments of ideas about Deliberative Democracy. It brought evidence that more Cuban activists have been engaged and such a national gain is accompanied by increasing international support. It also served to prove the maturity archived in Cuba through specific contributions to the model. Although it is neither Cuban nor new, the model is being constantly enriched by the dynamics of its application in the Isle.
Historical background By 1980, Dr. Joseph M. Bessette— then Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Catholic University of America— coined the term Deliberative Democracy for the model he would rework in 1994. Since then it has been developed by renowned philosophers and political scientists. Of course, we talk about the formalization of the contemporary system. There are precedents of deliberative democracy in other much older systems as the agora
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