Cuba: State and Civil Society, an ambiguous relationship

Abstract

In the early years of the cuban revolutionary process started in 1959, there was an interested mess among the concepts of civil society and state, as it was placed on the agenda by the political leadership in those years. The first was built from the political discourse, mainly Fidel Castro's one, as identical to the state. It was made a common fact to speak of the people and Government, in this case the Revolutionary Government. In this paper we will try to see how it affected for many years the formation of civil society in Cuba and the development of the democratization process in this country. The prolonged economic crisis in Cuba was causing a break in the vision of the paternalistic state, opening up a possibility of building a democratic and more consistent exit for the country. Apart from the commercial blockade of the U.S, the economic crisis also stems by the obstacles imposed to the possibilities of internal growth due to the lack of autonomy of civil society.