“What is being operated here is a militarization of civil administration and a militaristic redesign of civil spacesviolating the jurisdiction legally established for the administration of the State,” said the Cuban activist and opposition leader from Havana. Manuel Cuesta Morúain reference to Resolution 9/2024 of the Cuban Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR).
For the social democratic politician and vice president of the Council for the Democratic Transition, as well as vice president of the civil platform D Frente, the norm, which decrees armed guard and the declaration as military areas of “agricultural production zones, constructive investments and assembly , and other urban and rural areas”, It is “a sneaky, undeclared application of the State of Emergency provided for in Article 222 of the Constitution.”
“It implies restrictions on civil access to entities and institutions through which civilians normally circulate to carry out their functions; perimeter of the entities determined by the MINFAR (curious that they are the ones who determine them, and not a commission of the National Assembly, and The most curious thing is that they have not been previously defined) and application of the Military Code to civilians in situations in which only the Military Prosecutor’s Office could act, ‘by jurisdiction’,” he emphasizes.
For his part, the opposition activist and journalist Boris González Arenasresident in Havana, points out the underlying reasons for this political decision, which involves arming people who will guard the civilian areas of the entire island that will be designated as a “Military Zone.”
“In my opinion, there are two compelling reasons, and both are despicable and characterize the extent of Castro’s inhumanity. The first is that, with the economic disaster and the terrifying hunger that we suffer, the audacity of criminals and others who, between the sword of repression and the wall of lack of food, they have not been afraid to take a step to challenge the weapon against the wall of hunger. “Increasing the lethality of the weapon with which your interests are guarded is the answer to the possible increase in theft and looting.”he points out.
“The other is that Castroism expects the increase in citizen protests and does not rule out the use of armed violence against the population which, it cannot be repeated enough, is unarmed in Cuba. The weapons distributed throughout the large group of facilities of military interest means having them on hand along with subjects trained to use them in any urban or rural space, immediately. Of course there will be other reasons, but these are two that I consider fundamental.”
Gonzáles Arenas extends his concern towards Directive 1 of the National Defense Council, published together with the MINFAR resolution, which decides the placement of active military personnel in positions within the provincial and municipal administrations of the Popular Power of the country.
“The Cuban institutional hierarchy has three clear strata. In order of relevance, these are: the Army, the Communist Party and the Government. That is something that cannot be lost sight of when discussing normative issues, since the norms, although not It can be said that they do not reflect this stratification (for example, Article 5 of the Constitution, which establishes the superiority of the Communist Party over all national institutions), they fail to illustrate its scope. If we lose sight of that relationship, it might seem. that there is talk of relationships between equals, and in Castroism that is far from happening,” he warns.
“When you review Directive 1 of 2024, which describes the way in which the provincial defense directorates and municipal defense departments are going to be organized, what you see technically is that they deprive the local bodies of Popular Power of any sovereignty. about them, since the sixth point of the document establishes that the military officers placed in charge of the provincial directorates or municipal departments are subordinate to the Minister of the Armed Forces. That is what you see technically, but. What is really happening is that the Army is flooding the provincial and municipal bodies of Popular Power with subjects of a higher authority, since their hierarchical equals in the rest of the directorates and departments, and even the highest figures of the municipal and provincial Government, are officials without any authority, who owe their positions some comfort and marginal ‘search’, and their future depends on how convenient they are in their performance to the higher strata; that is, to the Party and the Army.”
González Arenas recalls that the military presence within government bodies is an inherent feature of Castroism since its beginnings. “But since Raúl Castro’s rise to power, the hegemony of the military gained in scope, and this is not a nominal statement, but is palpable with the militarization of domestic and foreign trade through the transfer to the conglomerate of military companies. brought together in the Business Administration Group (GAESA), of entities such as the CIMEX corporation and Habagüanex, which were its previous competitors,” he points out.
“It should not be forgotten, likewise, that Manuel Marrero Cruz is an upstart from the group of military companies, who was first elevated to Minister of Tourism and later to Prime Minister and Head of Government, a clear intervention of the Army’s business interests in the performance of civil power”.
In this regard, Cuesta Morúa warns that this imposition of the military within the governments on the Island could generate “serious administrative and jurisdictional conflicts. At the provincial and municipal level, a military power is being established that, theoretically, has not been determined or decided by any of the electoral mechanisms. planned”.
From his perspective, the MINFAR resolution “is a creation of an environment of panic controlled by the State, under the assumption that the multiple crisis, already chronic, can unleash violent actions against state agencies; an extreme without evidence in the growing protests normalized by society since 2021, and whose nature has been strictly peaceful.
“In passing, there is an attempt at preventive deterrence and a reinforcement of immobility: Instead of resolving the crises, the regime takes advantage of it to strengthen the power of the military, to the detriment of the civilian sector. An issue that displaces and subordinates the Communist Party to militarization: the ideology cornered by the de facto power. This is a new political scheme that had only been seen in Cuba in the colonial era, never in the republican era, except with Batista’s coup d’état. Will this be a new type of coup d’état? “We would have to analyze more,” he reasons.
According to Cuesta Morúa, apart from all the above, The measure made law “is the recognition of the loss of social consensus, of symbolic control of society and the abyss opened between it and the State and the Government”.
This panorama would be ironic, he warns, “because in the narrative dispute, the Government has always tried to show and demonstrate that the only conflict that exists in Cuba is the one that exists with the United States. All of its military doctrine, from the conventional to the so-called ‘ War of all the people’, was mounted and thought on this axis. The Government recognizes for the first time what the opposition tried to show and prove somewhat unsuccessfully: that the main conflict is between the people and the Government. The military, who for obvious reasons are quite pragmatic, have just confirmed it. “I don’t know if they have developed a new doctrine behind this very profound movement, but we could call it ‘military defense of the State against the people.'”
Gonzáles Arenas agrees with the diagnosis, and adds: “The Castro regime is very nervous. I think that for the first time it is betting on maintaining a situation of social desperation without taking palliative measures, and it knows that this will lead to outbreaks capable of ending its control.” of power. Anyone could say that the outbreaks of August 1994 and July 2021 were identical situations, and I do not deny that there are similarities, but those episodes did not fail to have a certain component of surprise, while now it is something that is expected. from moment to moment.”
“Arming military institutions without being properly Army units has the purpose of creating a highly lethal first response ring, without having to resort to the military, murdering at random. The speed of mobilization is an important containment variable and could be the difference between the confrontation and eradication of a social mobilization with a minimum number of victims, and another with a high mortality rate,” he indicates.
But, close your reflection, “a massacre in Cuba could precipitate the end of Castroism“, whether due to a reaction by soldiers who refuse to shoot, or due to an international intervention led by the United States.”
