New poll: Cubans want economic over political change
COMMENTARY A new Cuba poll should make the U.S. — especially U.S. Cubans — realize that without any democratic past to refer to, Cubans will prioritize economic improvement over political change.
The British novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote that “we possess nothing certainly except the past.”
That’s a powerful statement about the importance of human memory. And right now it’s a powerful reminder about the two Latin American countries that arguably matter most to American foreign policy: Venezuela and Cuba.
The former has memory of democracy. The latter doesn’t.
That helps explain poll after poll from Venezuela, where the U.S. military removed dictator Nicolás Maduro in January — and where some 90% now want new democratic elections held this year, because they say it’s “urgent” that acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the rest of Maduro’s holdover regime leave power as soon as possible.
At the same time, it helps explains a new poll of Cubans in Cuba — a survey that’s bound to be especially unsettling for more conservative Cubans in South Florida, who for decades have ideologically insisted that Cubans in Cuba care far more about expelling their island’s very real political dictatorship than they do about remedying its just as real economic disaster.
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Until this year, Venezuelans had lived under a brutally authoritarian socialist revolution for 27 years, first under the late Hugo Chávez, then Maduro. In reality, they’re still living under a remnant of that system with Rodríguez, whom the U.S. is keeping in power because she’s cooperating with President Donald Trump’s project to control Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
But that number — 27 years — matters. The median age in Venezuela is 30, meaning a good swath of the country’s population has at least some memory of the democracy that functioned there for four decades before 1999.
God knows it functioned imperfectly — the monstrous corruption it indulged prompted Chávez’s election — but it existed. Its free elections, free enterprise, free expression and peaceful transfers of power were there for the remembering.
And, now, for the restoring.
When you can think about something besides where your next meal comes from, you can care more about when the next political prisoner is released.
There is no such memory in Cuba. When Fidel Castro’s communist revolution took power 67 years ago, it simply replaced another dictatorship, Fulgencio Batista’s.
It’s best to keep that in mind, then, as you pore over the new Cuba poll conducted by Vanderbilt University-AmericasBarometer and Florida International University’s Latin America and Caribbean Center.
Endless blackouts
In the online survey of more than a thousand Cubans on the bankrupt island, a full three-fourths said their economic problems — including endless electricity blackouts and food shortages — matter more than their political repression.
Only 7% cited their political shackles as a primary concern.
Three-fourths did blame the regime for their economic catastrophe; most did say it trashes their rights. Still, 69% prioritized economic recovery — even, they said, if it means delaying political reform.
Even more striking: only 38% said democracy is a preferable form of government.
FIU’s Jose Miguel Cruz told me those findings indicate two challenging realities. The first, of course, is that lack of any democratic past for today’s Cubans. The second, he said:
“Cubans for seven decades have been told that what they have is democracy.
“So when they hear the word democracy, it’s not necessarily what the rest of us hear, because their whole understanding of it has been so contaminated.”
The absence and perversion of democracy in the Cuban imagination is a factor too many Cubans in Miami forget or dismiss when they demand that Cubans in Cuba must bring down their dictatorship before they can build up their economy.
But Cruz pointed to another intriguing finding in the Vanderbilt/FIU poll: those Cubans who receive remittance cash from family abroad, or those who have private businesses that provide more income, were more likely to see political change as a priority, too.
Having the luxury to think about something besides where your next meal will come from can make you more disposed to care about when the next political prisoner will be released.
Miami should stop baying for Cubans’ economic deprivation as a means of squeezing the regime — and start boosting their economic well-being as a means of challenging the regime.
It should concede the existence of Cuba’s fledgling private sector — the only thing that works there — and help it do more business with the U.S., especially since Cuba’s rotted regime is giving it freer rein .
Filling Cubans’ stomachs with chicken just might make it easier to fill their heads with democracy.
