CUBAN DEMOCRACY IN THE SPEECHES OF FIDEL CASTRO, 1959-1976

Fidel Castro developed an idea of democracy as a legitimate alternative to American democracy. At the dawn of the Cuban revolution Castro was careful enough to avoid Marxist concepts in his speeches, but after the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 Castro embraced socialism as the ideology of the revolution. Then the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat became the core of Castro's idea of democracy. In this context, the opposition between democracy and dictatorship disappeared. The dictatorship of the proletariat became working class democracy. Thus, according to Castro, the political participation of Cuban masses in the revolutionary process gave the Cuban project an inescapable democratic character. In 1976 the revolutionary government reinforced the socialist character of the Cuban state through the promulgation of a new constitution. Through this constitution the Cuban state embraced formal elections. Paradoxically, after embracing formal elections in 1976, the revolution lost popular power from below and actually became less democratic.