Manuel Cuesta Morúa talks to 14ymedio’s Reinaldo Escobar about Parliament’s rejection of an amnesty law for political prisoners
14ymedio, Manual Cuesta Morúa/Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 21 February 2024 — The Cuban Parliament recently rejected a request to process an amnesty law promoted by dozens of relatives of political prisoners. From that request, which the National Assembly classified as “inadmissible,” a broad debate was generated about the relevance or not of appealing to the Cuban regime’s own laws to promote change on the Island.
Manuel Cuesta Morúa talks about this with this newspaper. The opinion of this veteran dissident, based on the Island, addresses several of those aspects that we share with our readers.
Reinaldo Escobar/14ymedio: To legitimize or not to legitimize? Can you live under an authoritarian regime and refuse to accept all its official regulations and protocols?
Manuel Cuesta Morúa: It might seem cynical to say that the process of legitimizing dictatorships begins with the acceptance of the institutions that manage our existential or social condition. The misnamed “supply book” [ration book], the identity card and the passport are among those institutions through which the dictatorship regulates, controls and limits us, but which we accept. And not because we want to, but for two reasons: dictatorships are possible only if they institutionalize all social life. They are also obliged to incorporate language and certain democratic tools.
The misnamed “supply book” [ration book], the identity card and the passport are among those institutions through which the dictatorship regulates us.
RE/14ymedio. Why do they have that obligation?
MCM. Otherwise they have a serious problem of both internal and external legitimation. They have to appear to themselves and to others. For this reason, the legal and constitutional spaces that are left to the population so that they can become citizens are only conditions, almost inevitable obligations that dictatorships impose on themselves in order to be able to cross with a certain impunity the field and the game of appearances.
RE/14ymedio. So is it like a game of mirrors?
MCM. Exactly. They are not conditions that they impose on us, but rather institutional realities that they have no choice but to assume if they want to be accepted in some way. The dictatorship imposes some things on us by law, such as Article 5 of the Constitution, and others, the majority, outside or manipulating the law.
RE/14ymedio. An example of some of those conditions within the law?
MCM. The requirement to have a voter certif