The revolutionary triumph of 1959 established in Cuba a new concept of democracy, one that aimed to ensure access to active political life for large sectors of the previously excluded population. Toward this end, policies for universal social inclusion were developed. The people's political practices imparted the country's wealth into the hands of the poor, generating a great deal of social mobility and increasing popular participation. The context of imperialist aggression and the development process itself consolidated notions that limited popular participation: the apogee of bureaucracy, unity understood as unanimity, and the adoption to a certain extent of the currents of Soviet Marxism. The current challenges to propagate democracy in Cuba are three-tiered: to socialize power, to promote social diversity and to develop the revolutionary ideology.
Democracy; Participation; Socialism; Revolution; Citizenship
