Roberto Veiga González
Lawyer and political scientist / Contributor to Fundación Alternativas
There are moments when an entire society must look at itself in the mirror and decide whether it will continue to exist as a political community or resign itself to being merely a population without a shared destiny. Cuba is living through one of those moments. Hence the relevance of the statement From Citizenship the Republic Is Born, issued by the Cuban Democratic Concertation D Frente. It is not a simple programmatic document, but a declaration of meaning: the affirmation that only citizenship—not power, not delegitimized institutions, not the inertia of the state—can serve as the origin of a new Republic.
Such a stance contains a profound shift of paradigm. In a country where public life has been hijacked for decades by a logic of vertical control and tutelage, asserting that power must return to the citizenry is a foundational gesture. It implies conceiving sovereignty not as an inheritance but as an ethical and civic achievement. In this sense, the proposal for a Provisional Electoral Law, congceived as a transitional instrument to pave the way for a plural electoral process, points to the very root of national reconstruction: the restoration of the Cuban people’s right to represent themselves.
The text conveys a tone of serenity and political responsibility that avoids triumphalism or rupturist rhetoric. It does not call for demolition, but for reconstruction. This choice of language is, in itself, a political lesson. A democratic transition cannot be built on the desire for revenge but on the purpose of reconciliation and institutional renewal. And in that spirit, the statement sets out a roadmap that combines the ethical with the practical: releasing political prisoners, establishing fundamental rights, opening a constituent process, guaranteeing social justice, and approving modern legislation capable of steering the economy toward sustainable development.
What matters most is not the enumeration of measures, but the idea that sustains them: the Republic as the result of civic virtue. From Citizenship the Republic Is Born is not merely a title; it is a philosophical and political assertion. It means that institutions do not precede the citizen but are built upon them. And that principle—which may seem obvious in Europe—is revolutionary in the Cuban context, where the State has occupied, for more than half a century, the place that rightfully belongs to society.
The statement by D Frente implicitly recognizes that Cuba’s democratic reconstruction cannot emerge from existing institutions or from an opposition still fragmented, but from a civic awakening. That is why its call is directed both to the Island and to the diaspora, understanding that the Cuban nation extends beyond geographic borders. This vision—inclusive, plural, open—breaks with the old paradigms of exile and officialdom, which for decades defined themselves in mutual opposition.
Citizenship here is a political actor in formation. Its challenge is immense: to relearn the practice of freedom, rebuild trust, and assume responsibility for a shared future. But it is precisely that process—slow, uncertain, necessarily conflictive—that defines the possibility of a true republic. No economic reform, no diplomatic opening, no international project can substitute for that foundational act of civic sovereignty.
Europe has learned through its own history that democracy cannot be decreed; it must be cultivated. The reconstruction processes of twentieth-century Europe, and later of Central and Eastern Europe, showed that the most successful transitions were those in which citizenship became the moral center of politics. From that experience, the European public can recognize in this text a deep resonance: the idea that every authentic republic is born from a pact among equals, not from obedience to power.
But the Cuban context presents a particular challenge that demands understanding: the absence of an institutional framework capable of guaranteeing the orderly evolution of that civic will. The proposal for a Provisional Electoral Law, “perhaps for a single historical use,” as the document describes it, seeks precisely to offer that bridge. It is not just another law, but a temporary architecture designed to make possible what does not yet exist: a free election that opens the path toward a constituent process and, ultimately, toward the rule of law.
Understanding this logic is essential for Europe if it wishes to play a constructive role. This is not about intervention, but about recognizing a process emerging from below, one that requires dialogue rather than tutelage. European foreign policy toward Cuba—if it is to be coherent with its own tradition of human rights and democracy—should read this statement as an opportunity: the possibility of accompanying, with respect and clarity, a reconstruction process that is born from within, from the citizenry rather than from elites.
The text by D Frente does not ignore risks or limitations. In fact, it begins from a realistic acknowledgment: Cuba does not yet possess democratic rules or legitimate institutions to channel pluralism. But precisely for that reason it proposes an act of political imagination: constructing, from precariousness, a provisional legality capable of opening the door to what is possible. That is the essence of every transition. Europe knows this well: democracy does not arise from abundance, but from the decision to begin even when conditions are lacking.
There is in this proposal a lesson that transcends the Cuban case. In a time of global democratic crisis, when political disaffection and polarization threaten Western societies, Cuba offers an inverted mirror: in a place where free institutions do not exist, their value becomes evident; and where citizenship has been denied, one understands that without it no republic is possible.
“To return the management of the country to the free and plural exercise of citizenship”: thus the document begins. That phrase, apparently simple, condenses the essence of democratic politics. To return, not to seize; plural, not uniform; to exercise, not merely delegate. The Cuban Democratic Concertation D Frente is not proposing a revolution in the classical sense, but a restitution: the return of power to its legitimate source. This also implies an act of faith in the maturity of the Cuban people, in their capacity to deliberate, to choose, to build institutions that both represent and limit them.
Such confidence in the citizenry is not naïve; it is the only sensible bet. The alternative would be the perpetuation of the cycle of tutelage and exclusion that has defined Cuba’s recent history. But if the republic is born from citizenship, decadence is born from exclusion. The text expresses this with serenity, without inflammatory rhetoric, yet with a moral force that runs through every line: the time of the republic begins when society decides to assume its own destiny.
“Cuba can once again belong to all,” the statement concludes. That phrase, which could be read as a slogan, is in fact a definition of the republic. To belong “to all” means that power rests with the whole, not with a part. That political difference is not treason but a condition of freedom. That sovereignty is a shared space of duties and rights, not an instrument of domination.
This is the vision now emerging in the most lucid and serene strands of Cuban political thought. A vision that does not deny history but transcends it; that seeks not vengeance but reconstruction; that does not fear pluralism but embraces it as a source of legitimacy.
From citizenship the republic is born: this is perhaps the most important phrase uttered in Cuba in a long time. And if Europe knows how to listen, it may recognize in it a familiar voice: that of a nation which, from adversity, is attempting to return to the point of departure where Europe itself was born—the conviction that freedom, justice, and democracy exist only when they arise from the citizen.
