Brief Reflections on President Trump's Executive Order, "Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence" (29 Sept 2026) and the Naming of the Humans Who will Serve in and as the Super Intelligence Force

 

Pix Credit South Park, here

 

All of public life, it seems, is encapsulated in its performative aspects. If indeed that is true, then it is far more effective for the state apparatus and its techno-bureaucracies, to perform than to do much of anything else. This is not just  not just an American affection; it now runs in the blood of other important governmental apparatus. All of them understand that it is in the naming if a thing that one imbues it with collective (might I say in the old liberal democratic sense, popular) meaning which then serves as the principle means of signifying objects, concepts and the like. This is not a matter of performative linguistics but rather an essential element of what Guiguzi understood millennia ago in China (as did the Hebrew Bible) as the power of naming (ming-ming (明名 intelligent naming)--and the connection of naming with, and perhaps as, dominion. 

Cultures tied to the tradition of Abrahamic religions encounter this semiotic reality of signifying the world around the central figure of humanity under the leadership of God (Gen 2:118-19 (Adam naming all of the creatures brought before him by God), and lists. Lists are found throughout the Bible and provide a detailed description of historical connection, of pedigree, of the passage of time, and of the thing that is listed by reference to the quality the lists chronicle in common (eg, Gen 5:1-32 (the generations separating Adam from Noah and the first destruction of humanity). Guiguzi speaks of Ming (名)--of naming, of defining accurately, and of drawing distinctions, a concept that itself was closely though controversially tied to that of shi (实) of actuality, truth, or essence of the thing names (Guiguzi, Guiguzi: China’s First Treatise on Rhetoric: A Critical Translation and Commentary (Hui Wu (trans) (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), p. 156; 60 n. 26. (Xi Jinping's Semiotics of Marxism (名实) and the Coding Languages of Knowledge Platforms: 

 While the Trump Administration might not have had this in mind, as creatures of contemporary culture and as residents within its cognitive cages, the cognitive footprints of strategic naming--they might have unconsciously understood the strategic power of controlling a thing by naming it, and by naming it imposing meaning. Certainly that unconscious insight has been at play in the Trump Administration almost from its inception (eg the changing of the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, etc.). While elites might laugh, both the American and Chinese leaders appear to understand or at least deploy the power of naming and shaping, on maps, in rhetoric, and with discursive tropes that shape meaning. 

It is with that in mind, our minds anyway, that one can better appreciate the Trump Administration's announcement, 29 September 2026 of its  Executive Order, "Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence." The naming semiotics is quite fascinating (in its old sense of enchantment or bewitching). Consider the central naming justification in the E.O.'s 3rd paragraph of Section 1: 

"the term “Super Intelligence” more appropriately captures the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities of these technologies. It is therefore the policy of my Administration that, to the maximum extent permitted by law, the executive branch shall use the terms “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in place of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” and will not acknowledge the usage of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in any applicable setting."("Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence").

There is both text and subtext working here. At the level of text, the effort appears to aim at changing the direction of gaze of these computational systems away from their distinction from the human, the natural, the traditional, the permanent, the constructed. . . .the artificial . . . . toward its characteristics as beyond, above, exceeding.

Consider the etymology of artificial: "late 14c., "not natural or spontaneous," from Old French artificial, from Latin artificialis "of or belonging to art," from artificium "a work of art; skill; theory, system," from artifex (genitive artificis) "craftsman, artist, master of an art" (music, acting, sculpting, etc.), from stem of ars "art" (see art (n.)) + -fex "maker," from facere "to do, make" (from PIE root *dhe- "to set, put")." It is one that conjures up artifice, for example--something crafted but also crafty. It carries within its naming a warning--beware, beware the thing crafted, for it may well be crafty and ultimately dangerous--like the Trojan Horse. This is something that is not human, made by humans, not of this Earth, and so crafted something about which one ought to be(a)ware.

Super, on the other hand, is meant to connote something else entirely. Nit the opposite of artificial, but rather a refocus on quality. Its etymology suggests a "word-forming element of Latin origin meaning "above, over" in place or position; also in manner, degree, or measure, "over, beyond;" from Latin super (adverb and preposition) "above, over, on the top (of), beyond, besides, in addition to." This is from *(s)uper-, variant form of PIE root *uper "over." This is something positive; one ought not to be(a)ware but rather one ought to embrace that which is superior (there it is again, in the opening compound, super-). We move here, semiotically, from a signification of caution and impermanence--a second order developmental canker or growth, perhaps benign perhaps malignant--to something positive--like sunshine on a cold day, the warmth of which will transport humanity toward  something supreme, something situated above. 

This is not just word play. It represents an effort to change the discourse by changing the naming. And for the President the discourse was certainly going the wrong way, with increasingly herd like vocalizations of fear building in layers like a polyphonic choral work lurching toward cataclysm (directly from Greek kataklysmos "deluge, flood, inundation," from kataklyzein "to deluge"). That chorus was increasingly augmented by global techno-bureaucrats, civil society, and more importantly, from the principal rival of  the United States which, though sharing a strong program of innovation--wherever it might take the society--came at it from a very different direction. To concede artificiality, to concede the power of public techno-bureaucracy was, in effect, tp concede to the Chinese Marxist-Leninist model of hot wiring innovation. That was a line this President and his advisors could not cross (though it could dip its toes as it has since 2025--offering leadership and guidance but no control in the absence of issues of national security). 

It is in this way that what might appear, at first blush, as a sad little joke, at the expense of the administration that lost its way, might also appear to be a surprisingly astute management of text in the service of managing cognitive framing of an issue that the Administration wants to go in a different direction. And, indeed, that conscious reframing may well be evidenced in the E.O.'s text, though perhaps despite itself: "The extraordinary technologies being pioneered by American innovators far exceed what was envisioned when the term “Artificial Intelligence” first came into use. The capabilities of today’s frontier systems do much more than imitate or automate discrete aspects of human intelligence." ("Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence"). 

Now THAT (whatever one thinks of its politics) is a phenomenology of semiotics!

It is worth noting that the Trump Administration did not invent this, nor is it clear that they will be as successful  deploying the technologies of collective cognitive semiotics as predecessor Administrations and those managing these changes in the "marketplace of ideas" from a progressive perspective. Indeed for many the analysis may produce a shrug followed by a recollection of the political-cultural power of some variation of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (e.g., J.A. Lucy, Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, in (2001) International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences 3486-13490 (refers to the proposal that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality. Linguistic relativity stands in close relation to semiotic-level concerns with the general relation of language and thought, and to discourse-level concerns with how patterns of language use in cultural context can affect thought)). Still, one is not speaking here about linguistic relativism, rather one considers the instrumentalization of the possibility in a conscious effort to guide thought through text-culture.

The E.O is, as well, in its own way, quite a remarkable document, even beyond its semiotics.

1. Paragragh 1 of Section 1, the traditional justificatory chapeau does a very nice job of slapping General Secretary Xi as he returns to China by using the language of the Communist Party of China's 3rd Plenum (innovation and high quality production/development/modernization) against him. He offers a US version of 3rd Plenum policy in the form of its most aggressively innovative aspects--super (formerly artificial) intelligence.  "The modern field of artificial intelligence was born in the United States, where American scientists first gave the field its name and laid the foundations for its development. Seventy years later, powered by our Nation’s unmatched culture of innovation, world-leading companies and research institutions, and entrepreneurial spirit, America is once again pushing the technological frontier forward." ("Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence").

2.  Section 2 then provides instructions to the bureaucracy, and to those dependent on it, respecting the appropriate discursive forms of conversation (and perhaps eventually of cognitive base-lining): "To the maximum extent permitted by law, executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in place of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents, and other non-statutory documents within the executive branch."("Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence").

3. Section 3 then produces the operationalization of the semiotic turn. While Section 3(a) aligns the definition of "super" with "artificial" intelligence in current text, Section 3(b) looks to a redefinition of the term to align not with the "artificial" but with the "super" part of the intelligence that is the subject of regulation and management.  

(b) Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST), in consultation with the heads of other agencies as the APST deems appropriate, shall submit to the President proposed legislative language to establish a Federal definition of “Super Intelligence” and “SI” that reflects the capabilities described in section 1 of this order. The proposal shall include: (i) an assessment of whether, and to what extent, the definition of “Super Intelligence” and “SI” should modify, expand upon, or otherwise supersede the existing statutory definition of “artificial intelligence”; (ii) any proposed conforming amendments, as appropriate, to existing statutory references to “artificial intelligence” and “AI”; and (iii) recommendations for any additional Presidential or executive action necessary to implement the proposed definition throughout the executive branch. ("Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence").

There it is--technical, to some comic and irrelevant, a cultural outlier for the moment; at the same time a quite potentially potent instrument for thr rewiring of the subtext of the significs of techno-computational systems operating, in some respects outside of the human body.  

4. Likewise one can understand the value of creating a coordinating techno-bureaucracy under the aegis of which whatever is to be done will be undertaken. But more importantly whatever is to be incarnated now has a name, a body, and a purpose through which much more text, much more discursive elements can be developed, and the rest of the techno-bureaucracy can be managed. . . and the legacy and contemporary press and social media can be given lots and lots of text and images, lots and lots of action, the phenomenology of which will make manifest the imaginaries crafted through naming.  And so on 4 October 2026 the President announced, as is his habit, on the Truth/Social website, the naming of the humans who will constitute our (well named from a popularizing discursive point of view--very 1930s Flash Gordon or Disney's World of Tomorrow that is retro in its super modernity) the SIF, the US Super Intelligence Force. 

Pix credit Truth/Social here

 We can only observe for the moment, the "SIF"-ing that is in the offing will continue to enhance the phenomenological semiotics embodied in this quite remarkable naming process. 

The text of the Executive Order (Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence (29 Sept 2026) follows below.

Clip from 1996 Movie, "Mars Attacks" here

 

Just published--Antonio José Pagán Sánchez, Academic Output in China on the Sino-Latin American Relationship (2013–2025): Current Status and Evolution of Perspectives

 

Pix credit here

 

Delighted to pass along this announcement recently received on the publication of Antonio José Pagán Sánchez, Academic Output in China on the Sino-Latin American Relationship (2013–2025): Current Status and Evolution of Perspectives, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2026, vol. 45, issue 4, pp. 1-12 (https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.70123). Here is the abstract;

ABSTRACT.-Despite the growing importance of China–Latin America relations, academic perspectives from China on this topic remain understudied. This manuscript addresses that gap by analysing the 213 articles on the subject retrieved from CNKI through two subject searches covering the period 2013–2025. The findings reveal several key patterns. First, much of the literature is closely linked to China's Party-State institutions. Second, the economic and political dimensions are jointly dominant and almost equally represented, while the cultural dimension gains ground over the period. Third, the academic discourse on the relationship throughout the period mainly focused on opportunities in spite of new global challenges.

The author indicated a willingness to share the manuscript with interested readers. 

Reconstrucción de la legalidad en Cuba: estructura, principios fundamentales, metodología y vías de reforma (plan de acción y lista de verificación de calidad) [Reconstructing Legality in Cuba--Structure, First Principles, Methodology, and Pathways to Reform (Action Plan and Quality Checklist)]

 

 English version here

El secretario de Estado Marco Rubio afirmó el lunes que Cuba «ya ha caído» y que es un «Estado fallido», en medio de crecientes tensiones entre los Estados Unidos y la nación insular. «Bueno, la verdad es que Cuba ya ha caído», declaró Rubio a Sean Hannity, de Fox News. «No tiene una economía funcional y está gobernada por personas que siguen predicando sobre una supuesta revolución que lleva veinte años muerta. Nunca ha funcionado». * * * Añadió que el problema de Cuba «es que, básicamente, en este momento es un Estado fallido en todos los sentidos de la palabra». «Puede que tengan un gobierno capaz de encarcelar y matar a la gente; tienen un régimen que es capaz de hacerlo y que ha encarcelado y matado a personas, pero no es un gobierno funcional ni es un país funcional», prosiguió el secretario de Estado. «Sencillamente no lo es. Y, además, es un gobierno alimentado por la corrupción y el robo». * * * Agregó que los Estados Unidos esperan que algunos funcionarios de la isla «abran los ojos» para transformar el gobierno desde dentro y, con el tiempo, traer «la libertad económica» y, «ante todo, la libertad política». «Eso requerirá un período de transición», le dijo al presentador. «Lamentablemente, quienes siguen coreando consignas revolucionarias —demasiados de ellos— todavía creen que pueden esperar a que pase esta administración sin hacer cambios ni hacer nada. Están equivocados, y aprenderán la lección por las malas si no rectifican». (Rubio dice que Cuba «ya ha caído»: «Es un Estado fallido»)

El Estado cubano, en cambio, percibe algo positivo que emerge de la situación actual (Cuba y el trabajo constante por una mejor sociedad): «Para nosotros no tiene sentido el crecimiento económico si no tiene impacto en el desarrollo social; para nosotros no tiene sentido generar riqueza económica si no tiene un impacto y un apoyo a los programas sociales y, sobre todo, que la riqueza que construyamos se distribuya con un concepto de justicia social»; pero véase Cuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline [Cuba y la constitución de un estado estable de miseria: ideología, política económica y disciplina popular].

En la medida en que la situación en Cuba se acerca a algún tipo de desenlace, dentro de un espectro de posibilidades muy amplio, lo que vendrá después merece cierta reflexión, quizás más que el propio proceso de tránsito de una etapa del desarrollo histórico cubano a la siguiente. Esa reflexión suele ser muy estratégica y orientada a objetivos. Lamentablemente, ese enfoque, tan humano, podría limitarse a prolongar el proceso cíclico de la tragedia cubana. Esa tragedia adquirió su forma moderna durante el siglo XIX y se ha reproducido desde entonces bajo diversas formas, algunas de ellas violentas.

En ese contexto, podría resultar útil comenzar por los primeros principios. Se trata de los compromisos previos, en gran medida no examinados, de carácter normativo y cognitivo, que sostienen el orden social, cultural y político. Este tipo de ejercicio no favorece los intereses inmediatos de nadie, razón de más para emprenderlo. Su objeto es la naturaleza de la transición jurídica en Cuba. Esa transición podría conducir finalmente a Cuba hacia un modelo distinto de legalidad marxista-leninista, cuya importación se ha resistido desde la década de 1990, quizás con razón. En el otro extremo del espectro, podría llevarla a algún tipo de nueva aventura en la democracia liberal, o al menos en sus formas. Desde la perspectiva de la legalidad, cabría comenzar por un examen crítico de lo que cuenta, o debería contar, como derecho, como política, como saber académico y como justicia. Sobre esas nociones descansa toda la empresa de un sistema político-jurídico, y suelen darse por sentadas sin pensarlo dos veces, como algo dado, natural, inevitable o intrínseco.

Esas consideraciones me llevaron a un primer intento de analizar estos primeros principios y sus efectos pragmáticos sobre el proyecto de reconstrucción de Cuba. El resultado es un ensayo, Reconstrucción de la legalidad en Cuba: desafíos para los decisores de política, los académicos y la sociedad civil en la reforma del modelo político-económico del marxismo-leninismo caribeño, que se presenta a continuación.

El presente resumen condensa los hallazgos principales y las conclusiones de relevancia política del ensayo Reconstrucción de la legalidad en Cuba. El ensayo aborda una cuestión de consecuencia práctica para todos los actores involucrados con el futuro institucional de Cuba: ¿cómo podría reconstruirse un ordenamiento jurídico bajo un régimen que, sin ser liberal-democrático, se desplace más allá del modelo político-económico formalmente adoptado por el Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) e implementado por el Estado a través de su aparato constitucional, administrativo y operativo? El análisis se dirige a los formuladores de políticas, académicos, actores económicos y la sociedad civil —tanto dentro de Cuba como en su diáspora.

Nota preliminar

La reconstrucción de la legalidad en Cuba no es un ejercicio de ingeniería jurídica. Es un problema de imaginación política constreñida por la historia institucional. La analogía boloñesa resulta más adecuada que la metáfora del retorno: lo que se requiere es la reconstrucción de un corpus jurídico a partir de materiales producidos por un sistema diferente —materiales que portan la huella de su origen pero que pueden ser reelaborados para nuevos propósitos dentro de un nuevo marco institucional.

Nada de esto es simple. Nada de esto puede lograrse rápidamente. Y nada de esto puede ser impuesto desde el exterior sin reproducir la misma lógica de dominación que la reconstrucción pretende superar. La reconstrucción de la legalidad en Cuba es, en última instancia, un proyecto que deberá ser emprendido por los cubanos mismos —todas las facciones, todos los sectores, incluida la diáspora—, trabajando con y a través de los materiales que su propia historia ha producido, hacia un futuro que ninguna de las jaulas cognitivas actualmente disponibles —ni la marxista-leninista, ni la liberal-democrática, ni la nostálgica republicana— puede anticipar completamente.

 

Diagnóstico central

El ensayo identifica una paradoja central: toda reconstrucción emprendida mientras el modelo político-económico está siendo reformado habrá de edificarse con los materiales producidos por el sistema mismo que se transforma. No existe una tabula rasa; no hay un sustrato civilista prístino esperando ser descubierto una vez que se retire el barniz ideológico. La metáfora misma del barniz presupone lo que habría que demostrar —a saber, que existe una arquitectura civil estable subyacente. Esta no existe, o al menos no en un sentido operativamente significativo.

Las instituciones, las doctrinas, los hábitos profesionales, el vocabulario constitucional y la cultura política del derecho cubano han sido moldeados por décadas de funcionamiento dentro de un marco marxista-leninista. El desafío no es meramente reemplazar un ordenamiento jurídico por otro, sino restablecer la continuidad en la legalidad al tiempo que se articula una nueva visión de la relación entre derecho y política —una que reconozca la historia del propio sistema sin permanecer cautiva de ella.

Hallazgos clave

1. La herencia marxista-leninista

El derecho privado fue tornado conceptualmente imposible. Bajo la teoría marxista-leninista, la distinción público-privado queda disuelta. Toda propiedad es fundamentalmente colectiva; el Estado es su custodio. La autonomía privada estaba, como la propia doctrina cubana ha reconocido, "seca e infértil." La migración normativa dejó al derecho privado "vacío de contenido," trasladando su marco regulatorio al derecho administrativo y económico. Para 1968, el Código Civil y el Código de Comercio perdieron prácticamente toda efectividad. El currículo siguió el mismo destino: las asignaturas de Derecho Mercantil, Derecho Hipotecario y Derecho Corporativo desaparecieron por considerarse "de naturaleza burguesa."

El enriquecimiento indebido como instrumento de transformación estructural. La reconfiguración marxista-leninista de las instituciones jurídicas no fue meramente punitiva; fue estructuralmente unidireccional. Bajo los enfoques soviético y cubano, las instituciones jurídicas fueron reconfiguradas de modo que solo el Estado pudiera ser beneficiario de las transferencias correctivas. El Decreto-Ley 149/1994 representa la cara doméstica de la misma lógica que Castro desplegó internacionalmente en el discurso de la deuda odiosa a partir de 1985. Ambos reposan sobre un único fundamento conceptual: que la acumulación bajo condiciones capitalistas o imperiales es inherentemente sospechosa.

2. La plantilla soviético-oriental

La ruptura coordinada de 1975–76 —el Primer Congreso del PCC, el Código de Familia socialista, la Constitución socialista, todos contemporáneos con el Zivilgesetzbuch (ZGB) de la RDA— no fue un préstamo selectivo. Fue una transformación estructural. Cualquier forma civilista que sobreviviera en los códigos cubanos llegó a través de la retención de la arquitectura del Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch por parte del ZGB. El desafío de la reconstrucción es, en este sentido, la imagen especular del trasplante.

3. La imposibilidad del retorno

La interrupción entre 1959 y 2026 se extiende por sesenta y siete años —un período más prolongado que la Primera República Cubana. La memoria institucional ha sido desplazada no solo por la política deliberada sino por el simple paso del tiempo. La captura curricular eliminó campos enteros del conocimiento jurídico. Los marcos jurídicos internalizados por la diáspora —fundamentalmente el common law estadounidense— funcionan como derecho extranjero en el contexto institucional cubano. Y Cuba ha desarrollado lo que el ensayo denomina un "estado estable de miseria": un equilibrio precario sostenido mediante la disciplina de la escasez, que cualquier reconstrucción debe evitar desestabilizar sin ofrecer una alternativa funcional.

4. La paradoja de la continuidad y la analogía boloñesa

El ensayo propone que la analogía apropiada para la situación de Cuba no es la restauración de un ordenamiento jurídico perdido sino la recepción del derecho romano en la Bolonia del siglo XII. Los Glosadores no heredaron el derecho romano como práctica viva; lo recibieron como un corpus textual que debía ser reconstruido para nuevos usos dentro de un marco institucional fundamentalmente diferente. Los académicos cubanos se encuentran en una posición análoga. La reconfiguración doctrinal emprendida por los académicos cubanos en las décadas de 1990 y 2000 representaría no el triunfo de la normatividad civilista, sino la construcción de un discurso académico paralelo —dirigido a una audiencia internacional y operando bajo la tolerancia (no la derrota) del establishment político. Esto es lo que el ensayo denomina "jurisprudencia Potemkin": técnicamente lograda, genuinamente erudita, pero estructuralmente incapaz de afectar el ordenamiento jurídico operativo que pretende reinterpretar.

5. Tres visiones del derecho y la política

El ensayo identifica tres visiones en competencia: (a) el formalismo republicano, que trató las formas jurídicas como autosuficientes y aisló los arreglos patrimoniales del escrutinio distributivo; (b) la instrumentalización marxista-leninista, que redujo el derecho a una "correa de transmisión" del poder político; y (c) la cuestión justinianea —la recuperación de la justicia como criterio evaluativo independiente que ni la tradición pandectística ni la instrumentalización marxista-leninista han proporcionado. Ambas reducen la relación tripartita justinianea de derecho, justicia y jurisprudencia a un binomio, eliminando la justicia de la ecuación.

6. La jaula cognitiva y la re-sovietización

La Conceptualización del modelo económico y social cubano de desarrollo socialista, adoptada en el Séptimo Congreso del PCC en 2016, constituyó un acto de re-sovietización: la reafirmación explícita de la primacía de la propiedad estatal, el papel dirigente del Partido y la prohibición de la concentración de riqueza en manos no estatales. La osificación ideológica del PCC —su tratamiento de la ideología fundacional como escritura divina, inmutable e inamovible— contradice la premisa misma del marxismo: que la teoría debe evolucionar para reflejar las condiciones cambiantes del desarrollo histórico. La jaula cognitiva del Partido establece los límites dentro de los cuales puede desarrollarse la legalidad.

7. Las dos Cubas: formal e informal

Las economías formal e informal coexisten en una relación de necesidad mutua. La economía informal ha producido sus propias culturas institucional-jurídicas: sistemas de trueque, redes de confianza, mecanismos consuetudinarios de resolución de disputas y una suerte de lex mercatoria transnacional fundamentada en las costumbres y tradiciones de los participantes. Es en el sector informal, más que en cualquier modelo importado del exterior, donde pueden hallarse las semillas de un desarrollo indígena del tipo de elemento civil robusto que resulta esencial para un sistema institucional-jurídico estabilizador.

8. Horizontes comparados

La experiencia china sugiere que la separación entre el poder político (radicado en el partido de vanguardia, por encima de la constitución) y el poder administrativo (ejercido a través de los órganos del Estado, sujeto a restricciones constitucionales) resulta viable dentro de los parámetros del marxismo-leninismo. Las transiciones postsocialistas europeas ofrecen una lección de cautela sobre la arrogancia de las élites liberal-democráticas que asumieron que mini-réplicas de la democracia liberal surgirían espontáneamente de las cenizas del sistema anterior. El modelo vietnamita de apertura gradual dentro de la continuidad del sistema de Partido-Estado ha sido cultivado como punto de referencia.

9. La contradicción interna de la Constitución de 2019

La Constitución de 2019 reconoce simultáneamente la propiedad privada y prohíbe la concentración de la propiedad. Esta tensión interna —que refleja las restricciones de la Conceptualización— implica que toda propuesta de reforma debe navegar entre el reconocimiento constitucional de la propiedad privada y la prohibición doctrinaria-partidista de su acumulación.

10. Condiciones de posibilidad

El ensayo identifica varias dimensiones técnico-doctrinales que merecen atención: (a) el concepto de Vermögenszuordnung (atribución patrimonial) como herramienta para reconstruir la lógica del enriquecimiento injustificado más allá del marco punitivo soviético; (b) la neutralidad residual del ZGB como punto de partida técnico; (c) la perversión de la subsidiariedad —la inversión del principio según el cual la acción colectiva solo se justifica cuando la acción individual es insuficiente—; y (d) la integración sistémica del artículo 67(a) como vía para reconectar las disposiciones codificadas con una lógica jurídica coherente. Las implicaciones prácticas se extienden al litigio pendiente bajo la Ley Helms-Burton, al arbitraje internacional relativo a inversiones expropiadas y a la planificación postransicional.

* * *

Plan de acción para la reforma

Las siguientes fases se ofrecen no como un plan maestro —los planes maestros presuponen un grado de certeza que la situación cubana no permite— sino como un marco para organizar los esfuerzos de reforma. Las fases no son estrictamente secuenciales; varias pueden avanzar en paralelo y todas están sujetas a revisión a medida que las condiciones evolucionen.

Fase 1: Diagnóstico e inventario

1.     Mapear el ordenamiento jurídico operativo. Realizar un inventario comprensivo del ordenamiento jurídico tal como realmente opera —no como lo describen los textos codificados—, distinguiendo entre el derecho en los libros y el derecho en la práctica. Esto incluye las normas consuetudinarias y los mecanismos de resolución de disputas de la economía informal.

2.     Auditar la brecha institucional y de personal. Evaluar el estado de la educación jurídica, la disponibilidad de personal capacitado en derecho privado, derecho mercantil y derecho comparado, y la capacidad de las instituciones existentes para absorber el cambio doctrinal.

3.     Catalogar la exposición en materia de reclamaciones y propiedad. Inventariar las reclamaciones pendientes y potenciales bajo la Ley Helms-Burton (Título III), los compromisos de arbitraje internacional y el aparato confiscatorio doméstico edificado sobre el Decreto-Ley 149/1994 e instrumentos conexos.

Fase 2: Reconstrucción doctrinal

4.     Confrontar la lógica normativa del marxismo-leninismo. Abordar el sistema normativo heredado no como contaminación a ser purgada sino como un ordenamiento normativo con su propia coherencia interna, que debe ser comprendido antes de poder ser trascendido. El error que debe evitarse es tratar la teoría marxista-leninista como exógena al sistema jurídico.

5.     Rearticular la relación derecho-política-justicia. Desarrollar una concepción de la justicia que opere como criterio evaluativo independiente —una que supere tanto la abstracción pandectística como la instrumentalización marxista-leninista. Ello requiere recuperar la relación tripartita justinianea.

6.     Aprovechar la neutralidad técnica residual del ZGB. Utilizar los elementos arquitectónicos ideológicamente neutros retenidos en el Código Civil a partir del Zivilgesetzbuch de la RDA como punto de partida técnico para la reconstrucción doctrinal, reconociendo al mismo tiempo que estos elementos portan la huella de su origen.

Fase 3: Capacidad institucional y formación

7.     Reformar la educación jurídica. Reintroducir el derecho privado, el derecho mercantil, el derecho comparado y la teoría jurídica más allá del marco marxista-leninista en el currículo de las facultades de derecho. Formar nuevas generaciones de juristas con competencias que la captura curricular de las últimas seis décadas eliminó.

8.     Incorporar a la diáspora como recurso, no como modelo. La experiencia de la diáspora cubana en sistemas jurídicos diversos constituye un recurso de valor significativo, pero el derecho de la diáspora funciona como derecho extranjero en el contexto cubano. La incorporación debe ser colaborativa, no prescriptiva.

9.     Restablecer el intercambio académico. Reconstruir el intercambio académico con la comunidad jurídica internacional, incluida la academia española y latinoamericana, en condiciones que permitan que la producción académica alcance el ordenamiento jurídico operativo en lugar de producir jurisprudencia Potemkin para consumo internacional.

Fase 4: Integración de la economía informal

10.  Reconocer las culturas institucional-jurídicas de la economía informal. Los sistemas de trueque, las redes de confianza, los mecanismos consuetudinarios de resolución de disputas y las prácticas comerciales transnacionales de la economía informal representan desarrollo jurídico indígena. Toda reforma que ignore este sector desconoce la fuente más auténtica de práctica civil cubana.

11.  Construir puentes entre la legalidad formal y la informal. Desarrollar mecanismos para la integración gradual de las prácticas informales en el ordenamiento jurídico formal, sin destruir las normas funcionales que han sostenido la actividad económica fuera del sector estatal.

Fase 5: Propiedad y resolución de reclamaciones

12.  Elaborar un marco para las reclamaciones de propiedad. Abordar la intersección entre la confiscación doméstica (arraigada en la doctrina marxista-leninista del enriquecimiento indebido) y las reclamaciones internacionales (Helms-Burton, arbitraje internacional). Reconocer que la lógica confiscatoria doméstica y el discurso castrista de la deuda odiosa comparten un fundamento conceptual único que un régimen sucesor deberá confrontar simultáneamente desde ambas direcciones.

13.  Navegar las disposiciones constitucionales sobre propiedad. Toda reforma en materia de propiedad debe operar dentro de —o procurar la enmienda de— la tensión constitucional entre el reconocimiento de la propiedad privada y la prohibición de la concentración de la propiedad, tensión que refleja las restricciones doctrinarias del Partido.

Fase 6: Diferenciación institucional

14.  Separar la dirección política de la implementación administrativa. Esto no exige necesariamente el desmantelamiento del PCC ni la adopción de un sistema multipartidista. Exige, sin embargo, que el trabajo político del Partido —la determinación de objetivos y prioridades— sea institucionalmente distinguible del trabajo administrativo del Estado —la implementación de esos objetivos a través de una maquinaria institucional sujeta al estado de derecho. La experiencia china demuestra que esta separación es posible dentro de un sistema de Partido-Estado.

15.  Clarificar la cadena de mando. Esclarecer la relación entre los Congresos del Partido, los Lineamientos, las disposiciones constitucionales y los códigos operativos, de modo que el significado jurídico de cualquier disposición codificada pueda comprenderse con independencia de la doctrina partidista cambiante.

Fase 7: Inserción internacional y seguimiento

16.  Prepararse para la exposición jurídica internacional. Un régimen sucesor enfrentará simultáneamente reclamaciones de deuda odiosa desde el exterior, la necesidad de desmantelar un aparato confiscatorio doméstico y el imperativo de construir un marco institucional-jurídico capaz de atraer inversión, proteger derechos de propiedad y proporcionar la certeza y previsibilidad que los actores económicos requieren.

17.  Establecer mecanismos de seguimiento y retroalimentación. Incorporar en todo proceso de reforma la capacidad de evaluación iterativa, de modo que la reconstrucción pueda ajustarse a medida que sus efectos se manifiesten —evitando la arrogancia de suponer que un modelo único, ya sea liberal-democrático, marxista-leninista o republicano-nostálgico, pueda anticipar la totalidad de las consecuencias.

* * *

Lista de verificación de calidad para propuestas de reforma

Las siguientes preguntas se ofrecen como instrumento diagnóstico. Toda propuesta de reforma que no pueda responderlas afirmativamente, o que no las haya considerado seriamente, corre el riesgo de reproducir —bajo distinto ropaje doctrinal— las deficiencias estructurales que pretende corregir.

Continuidad y materiales

☐    ¿La propuesta trabaja con y a través de los materiales producidos por el sistema existente, en lugar de asumir una tabula rasa?

☐    ¿Reconoce los estratos institucionales —colonial, republicano, revolucionario, soviético, informal— en lugar de tratar solo uno como auténtico?

☐    ¿Evita la falacia del barniz —la suposición de que existe intacta una arquitectura de derecho civil debajo de la capa marxista-leninista?

Evitar el retorno nostálgico

☐    ¿La propuesta evita presuponer un retorno a las formas jurídicas anteriores a 1959, dado que sesenta y siete años de desplazamiento institucional hacen dicho retorno históricamente irreproducible?

☐    ¿Trata la experticia jurídica de la diáspora como recurso y no como plantilla, reconociendo que el derecho de la diáspora funciona como derecho extranjero en el contexto institucional cubano?

La justicia como criterio independiente

☐    ¿La propuesta articula la justicia como criterio evaluativo independiente, en lugar de reducir el derecho a un sistema técnico (abstracción pandectística) o a un instrumento político (correa de transmisión marxista-leninista)?

☐    ¿Recupera la relación tripartita de derecho, justicia y jurisprudencia, o simplemente sustituye un binomio (derecho-política) por otro (derecho-técnica)?

Producción académica y derecho operativo

☐    ¿La propuesta crea condiciones bajo las cuales la producción académica puede alcanzar y afectar el ordenamiento jurídico operativo, en lugar de producir una jurisprudencia Potemkin internacionalmente respetable pero domésticamente inerte?

☐    ¿Asegura autonomía académica suficiente para permitir un desarrollo doctrinal genuino, en lugar de una producción que opera dentro de una jaula cognitiva definida por la doctrina del Partido?

Coherencia constitucional

☐    ¿La propuesta es consistente con las disposiciones sobre propiedad de la Constitución de 2019 o, si requiere enmienda constitucional, reconoce y planifica para ello?

☐    ¿Aborda la tensión interna entre el reconocimiento constitucional de la propiedad privada y la prohibición de la concentración de la propiedad?

La economía informal

☐    ¿La propuesta se involucra con las culturas institucional-jurídicas de la economía informal —sistemas de trueque, redes de confianza, resolución consuetudinaria de disputas— como desarrollo jurídico indígena?

☐    ¿Evita el error de imponer un marco formal que destruya las normas informales funcionales sin proporcionar un sustituto viable?

Estabilidad

☐    ¿La propuesta tiene en cuenta el "estado estable de miseria" —el equilibrio precario sostenido mediante la disciplina de la escasez— y evita desestabilizarlo sin ofrecer una alternativa funcional?

☐    ¿Escalonada la reforma para minimizar el riesgo del tipo de dislocación que produjo una generación de tragedia en otras transiciones postsocialistas?

Exposición internacional y reclamaciones

☐    ¿La propuesta aborda las reclamaciones internacionales pendientes y potenciales —litigio bajo el Título III de Helms-Burton, arbitraje internacional, argumentos de deuda odiosa— y su interacción con los instrumentos confiscatorios domésticos?

☐    ¿Prepara para el desafío simultáneo de confrontar reclamaciones desde el exterior al tiempo que se desmantela un aparato confiscatorio doméstico?

Conciencia de la jaula cognitiva

☐    ¿La propuesta evita reproducir una jaula cognitiva —ya sea marxista-leninista, liberal-democrática o republicana-nostálgica— que constriña el abanico de posibilidades institucionales?

☐    ¿Reconoce que ninguno de los marcos actualmente disponibles puede anticipar completamente las formas institucionales que una legalidad cubana reconstruida pueda requerir?

* * *

 El ensayo completo aparece a continuación y también se puede consultar (y descargar) AQUÍ. Inglés aquí.

 

Reconstructing Legality in Cuba--Structure, First Principles, Methodology, and Pathways to Reform (Action Plan and Quality Checklist) [Reconstrucción de la legalidad en Cuba: estructura, principios fundamentales, metodología y vías de reforma (plan de acción y lista de verificación de calidad)]

 

Pix credit El País, Dying for the Revolution

Pix credit The New Humanitarian

 

Versión en Español aquí 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that Cuba has “already fallen” and is a “failed state” as tensions rise between the U.S. and island nation.  Well, the truth is Cuba has already fallen,” Rubio told Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “It does not have a functional economy, and it is governed by people who continue to preach about some revolution that has been dead for 20 years. It’s never worked.” * * * He added that Cuba’s problem “is, basically right now, it is a failed state in every sense of the word.” “Now they may have a government that’s capable of jailing and killing people, they have a regime capable and has jailed and killed people, but it’s not a functional government and it’s not a functional country,” the secretary of State continued. “It just simply isn’t. And in addition to that, it is one that’s fueled by corruption and theft.”* * * He added that the U.S. hopes some of the island’s officials “open their eyes” to reshape the government internally and eventually bring “economic freedom” and “political freedom first.” “That will require a period of transition,” he told the host. “Unfortunately, the people that continue to chant revolutionary slogans –– too many of them still believe that they can wait out this administration and make no changes and do nothing. They are wrong and they will learn the lesson the hard way if they don’t correct.” (Rubio says Cuba has ‘already fallen’: ‘It is a failed state’ )

 The Cuban state, on the other hand, sees something positive emerging from the current state of affairs (Cuba y el trabajo constante por una mejor sociedad: "«Para nosotros no tiene sentido el crecimiento económico si no tiene impacto en el desarrollo social; para nosotros no tiene sentido generar riqueza económica si no tiene un impacto y un apoyo a los programas sociales y, sobre todo, que la riqueza que construyamos se distribuya con un concepto de justicia social»; but see Cuba and the Constitution of a Stable State of Misery: Ideology, Economic Policy, and Popular Discipline).

 As the situation in Cuba comes closer to some sort of resolution along a very broad spectrum of possibility, the aftermath (perhaps more than the process of moving from one stage of Cuban historical development to the next) deserves some consideration. That consideration is usually very strategic and objectives oriented. Lamentably that all-too-human approach might merely continue the cyclical process of the Cuban tragedy that acquired its modern form during the 19th century, reproduced in a variety of forms, some violent, ever since. 

In that context it might be useful to start with first principles--with the prior commitments, largely unexamined of the normative and cognitive commitments of the social, cultural, and political order. This sort of exercise advances no one's immediate interests--all the more reason for engaging in the exercise) about the nature of legal transition in Cuba (transition that may in the end move Cuba to a different model of Marxist Leninist legality the importation of which has been resisted since the 1990s, and perhaps with good reason, or on the other end of the spectrum to some sort of new adventure in liberal democracy or at least its forms. From the perspective of legality one might start with a critical examination of what  counts, or ought to count, as law, as politics, as scholarship, as justice, upon which the entire enterprise of a political-legal system is grounded and which tend to be assumed away without a second thought as something given, natural, unavoidable, internal, etc. 

Those considerations led me to a first effort at something like an analysis of these first principles and their pragmatic effects on the project of Cuban reconstruction in the form of an essay, Reconstructing Legality in Cuba: Challenges for Policymakers, Academics, and Civil Society in Reforming the Political-Economic Model of Caribbean Marxism-Leninism, which follows below. 

This summary distills the principal findings and policy-relevant conclusions of Reconstructing Legality in Cuba. The essay addresses a question of practical consequence for anyone engaged with Cuba’s institutional future: how might a legal order be reconstructed under a regime that, while not liberal-democratic, moves beyond the political-economic model formally adopted by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and implemented by the State through its constitutional, administrative, and operative apparatus? The analysis is addressed to policymakers, academics, economic actors, and civil society—both within Cuba and in its diaspora. 

Opening Note

The reconstruction of legality in Cuba is not an exercise in legal engineering. It is a problem of political imagination constrained by institutional history. I will suggest a "Bologna analogy," tat the exercise is closer to the incorporation of a recovered Roman law in late medieval Italy than it is a process of return to a pristinely preserved prior state of still viable indigenous legality. That is, I will suggest, is more apt than the metaphor of return: what is required is the reconstruction of a legal corpus from materials produced by a different system—materials that bear the imprint of their origin but that can be reworked for new purposes within a new institutional framework.

Nothing about this is simple. Nothing about it can be accomplished quickly. And nothing about it can be imposed from outside without reproducing the very logic of domination that the reconstruction aims to overcome. The reconstruction of legality in Cuba is, ultimately, a project that must be undertaken by Cubans themselves—all factions, all sectors, including the diaspora—working with and through the materials that their own history has produced, toward a future that none of the currently available cognitive cages can fully anticipate.

Core Diagnosis

The essay identifies a central paradox: any reconstruction undertaken while the political-economic model is being reformed must be built with materials produced by the very system being transformed. There is no tabula rasa; no pristine civil-law substrate waiting to be uncovered once an ideological varnish is removed. The metaphor of varnish-removal presupposes what it would need to demonstrate—namely, that a stable civil architecture exists underneath. It does not, or at least not in any operationally meaningful sense.

The institutions, doctrines, professional habits, constitutional vocabulary, and political culture of Cuban law have been shaped by decades of operation within a Marxist-Leninist framework. The challenge is not merely to replace one legal order with another, but to re-establish continuity in legality while articulating a new vision of the relationship between law and politics—one that acknowledges the history of the system without remaining captive to it.

Key Insights

1. The Marxist-Leninist Inheritance: Private law was rendered conceptually impossible. Under Marxist-Leninist theory, the public-private distinction dissolves. All property is fundamentally collective; the State is its custodian. Private autonomy was, as Cuban doctrine itself recognized, “dry and infertile.” The normative migration drained private law of content, transferring its regulatory framework to administrative and economic law. By 1968, the Civil Code and Commercial Code had lost virtually all effectiveness. The curriculum followed: Mercantile Law, Mortgage Law, and Corporate Law disappeared as “bourgeois.”

Unjust enrichment served structural transformation. The Marxist-Leninist reconfiguration of legal institutions was not merely punitive; it was structurally unidirectional. Under both Soviet and Cuban approaches, legal institutions were reconfigured so that only the State could be the beneficiary of corrective transfers. Decree-Law 149/1994 represents the domestic face of the same logic that Castro deployed internationally in the odious-debt discourse from 1985 onward. Both rest on a single conceptual foundation: that accumulation under capitalist or imperial conditions is inherently suspect.

2. The Soviet-Eastern Bloc Template: The 1975–76 coordinated rupture—the first PCC Congress, the Socialist Family Code, the Socialist Constitution, all contemporaneous with the East German Zivilgesetzbuch (ZGB)—was not a selective borrowing. It was a structural transformation. Whatever civil-law forms survived in Cuban codes arrived through the ZGB’s own retention of Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch architecture. The reconstruction challenge is, in this sense, the mirror image of the transplant.

3. The Impossibility of Return: The interruption between 1959 and 2026 spans sixty-seven years—longer than Cuba’s First Republic. Institutional memory has been displaced not only by deliberate policy but by the passage of time. Curricular capture eliminated entire fields of legal knowledge. The diaspora’s internalized legal frameworks—principally U.S. common law—function as foreign law in the Cuban institutional context. And Cuba has developed what the essay calls a “stable state of misery”: a precarious equilibrium sustained by the discipline of scarcity, which any reconstruction must avoid destabilizing without offering a functional alternative.

4. The Paradox of Continuity and the Bologna Analogy: The essay proposes that the appropriate analogy for Cuba’s situation is not the restoration of a lost legal order but the reception of Roman law in twelfth-century Bologna. The Glossators did not inherit Roman law as living practice; they received it as a textual corpus to be reconstructed for new purposes within a fundamentally different institutional framework. Cuban scholars are in an analogous position. The doctrinal reconfiguration undertaken by Cuban academics in the 1990s and 2000s may represent not the triumph of civil-law normativity over Marxist-Leninist ideology, but the construction of a parallel academic discourse—one directed at an international audience and operating under the tolerance (not the defeat) of the political establishment. This is what the essay calls “Potemkin jurisprudence”: technically accomplished, genuinely learned, but structurally incapable of affecting the operative legal order it purports to reinterpret.

5. Three Visions of Law and Politics. The essay identifies three competing visions: (a) republican formalism, which treated legal forms as self-sufficient and deliberately insulated property arrangements from distributive inquiry; (b) Marxist-Leninist instrumentalization, which reduced law to a “transmission belt” of political power; and (c) the Justinianic question—the recovery of justice as an independent evaluative standard that neither the pandectistic tradition nor the Marxist-Leninist instrumentalization has provided. Both reduce the tripartite Justinianic relationship of law, justice, and jurisprudence to a binary, eliminating justice from the equation.

6. The Cognitive Cage and Re-Sovietization. The Conceptualización del modelo económico y social cubano de desarrollo socialista, adopted through the PCC’s Seventh Congress in 2016, constituted an act of re-Sovietization: the explicit reaffirmation of the primacy of state property, the leading role of the Party, and the prohibition of the concentration of wealth in non-state hands. The PCC’s ideological ossification—its treatment of foundational ideology as divine scripture, immutable and immovable—contradicts the very premise of Marxism: that theory must evolve to reflect changing conditions of historical development. The Party’s cognitive cage sets the boundaries within which legality may develop.

7. Two Cubas: Formal and Informal. The formal and informal economies coexist in a relationship of mutual necessity. The informal economy has produced its own institutional-legal cultures: barter systems, trust networks, customary dispute-resolution mechanisms, and a transnational lex mercatoria grounded in the customs and traditions of its participants. It is in the informal sector, more than in any imported model, that the seeds of an indigenous development of the kind of robust civil element essential to a stabilizing legal-institutional system may be found.

8. Comparative Horizons. The Chinese experience suggests that the separation of political power (residing in the vanguard party, above the constitution) from administrative power (exercised through state organs, subject to constitutional constraints) is viable within Marxist-Leninist parameters. The European post-socialist transitions offer a cautionary lesson about the arrogance of liberal-democratic elites who assumed that miniature replicas of liberal democracy would spring spontaneously from the ashes of the prior system. The Vietnamese model of gradual opening within Party-State continuity has been cultivated as a reference point.

9. The 2019 Constitution’s Internal Contradiction.The 2019 Constitution simultaneously recognizes propiedad privada and prohibits the concentración de la propiedad. This internal tension—which reflects the Conceptualización’s constraints—means that any reform proposal must navigate between constitutional recognition of private property and the Party-doctrine prohibition on its accumulation.

10. Conditions of Possibility. The essay identifies several technical-doctrinal dimensions that merit attention: (a) the concept of Vermögenszuordnung (attribution of assets) as a tool for reconstructing the logic of unjustified enrichment beyond the punitive Soviet framework; (b) the residual neutrality of the ZGB as a technical starting point; (c) the perversion of subsidiarity—the inversion of the principle that collective action is justified only when individual action is insufficient; and (d) the systemic integration of Article 67(a) as a pathway to reconnect codified provisions with a coherent legal logic. Practical implications extend to pending Helms-Burton litigation, international arbitration over expropriated investments, and post-transition planning.

* * *

Action Plan for Reform

The following phased steps are offered not as a blueprint—blueprints presuppose a degree of certainty that the Cuban situation does not permit—but as a framework for organizing reform efforts. The phases are not strictly sequential; several may proceed in parallel, and all are subject to revision as conditions develop.

Phase 1: Diagnosis and Inventor

1. Map the operative legal order. Conduct a comprehensive inventory of the legal order as it actually operates—not as codified texts describe it—distinguishing between law on the books and law in practice. This includes the informal economy’s customary norms and dispute-resolution mechanisms.

2. Audit the institutional and personnel gap. Assess the state of legal education, the availability of trained personnel in private law, commercial law, and comparative law, and the capacity of existing institutions to absorb doctrinal change.

3. Catalogue the claims and property exposure. Inventory pending and potential claims under the Helms-Burton Act (Title III), international arbitration commitments, and the domestic confiscatory apparatus built on Decree-Law 149/1994 and related instruments.

Phase 2: Doctrinal Reconstruction

4. Confront the normative logic of Marxism-Leninism. Engage with the inherited normative system not as contamination to be purged but as a normative order with its own internal coherence that must be understood before it can be transcended. The error to avoid is treating Marxist-Leninist theory as exogenous to the legal system.

5. Rearticulate the law-politics-justice relationship. Develop a conception of justice that operates as an independent evaluative standard—one that overcomes both pandectistic abstraction and Marxist-Leninist instrumentalization. This requires recovering the Justinianic tripartite relationship.

6. Exploit the ZGB’s residual technical neutrality. Use the ideologically neutral architectural elements retained in the Civil Code from the East German Zivilgesetzbuch as a technical starting point for doctrinal reconstruction, while recognizing that these elements carry the imprint of their origin.

Phase 3: Institutional Capacity and Training

7. Reform legal education. Reintroduce private law, commercial law, comparative law, and legal theory beyond the Marxist-Leninist framework into the law school curriculum. Train new generations of jurists with competencies that the curricular capture of the past six decades eliminated.

8. Engage the diaspora as a resource, not a model. The Cuban diaspora’s experience in diverse legal systems constitutes a resource of significant value, but diaspora law functions as foreign law in the Cuban context. Engagement must be collaborative, not prescriptive.

9. Re-establish scholarly exchange. Rebuild academic exchange with the international legal community, including the Spanish and Latin American academy, on terms that permit scholarship to reach the operative legal order rather than producing Potemkin jurisprudence for international consumption.

Phase 4: Integrating the Informal Economy

10. Recognize the informal economy’s institutional-legal cultures. The barter systems, trust networks, customary dispute-resolution mechanisms, and transnational commercial practices of the informal economy represent indigenous legal development. Any reform that ignores this sector disregards the most authentic source of Cuban civil-law practice.

11. Build bridges between formal and informal legality. Develop mechanisms for the gradual integration of informal practices into the formal legal order without destroying the functional norms that have sustained economic activity outside the state sector.

Phase 5: Property and Claims Resolution

12. Develop a framework for property claims. Address the intersection of domestic confiscation (rooted in the Marxist-Leninist enrichment doctrine) and international claims (Helms-Burton, international arbitration). Recognize that the domestic confiscatory logic and the Castro-era odious-debt discourse share a single conceptual foundation that a successor regime will need to confront simultaneously from both directions.

13. Navigate the 2019 Constitution’s property provisions. Any property reform must work within or seek amendment of the constitutional tension between the recognition of private property and the prohibition on concentration of property—a tension that reflects the Party’s doctrinal constraints. 

Phase 6: Institutional Differentiation

14. Separate political direction from administrative implementation. This does not necessarily require dismantling the PCC or adopting a multiparty system. It does require that the political work of the Party—the determination of objectives and priorities—be institutionally distinguishable from the administrative work of the State—the implementation of those objectives through an institutional machinery subject to the rule of law. The Chinese experience demonstrates that this separation is possible within a Party-State system.

15. Address the chain of command. Clarify the relationship among Party Congresses, the Lineamientos, constitutional provisions, and the operative codes, so that the legal significance of any codified provision can be understood independently of shifting Party doctrine.
Phase 7: International Engagement and Monitoring

16. Prepare for international legal exposure. A successor regime will simultaneously face odious-debt claims from abroad, the need to dismantle a domestic confiscatory apparatus, and the imperative to construct a legal-institutional framework capable of attracting investment, protecting property rights, and providing the certainty and predictability that economic actors require.

17. Establish monitoring and feedback mechanisms. Build into any reform process the capacity for iterative assessment, so that reconstruction can be adjusted as its effects become apparent—avoiding the arrogance of the assumption that any single model, whether liberal-democratic, Marxist-Leninist, or nostalgic-republican, can anticipate the full range of consequences.

* * *
Quality Checklist for Reform Proposals

The following questions are offered as a diagnostic instrument. Any reform proposal that cannot answer these questions affirmatively, or that has not seriously considered them, is likely to reproduce—in different doctrinal clothing—the structural deficiencies it purports to correct.

Continuity and Materials

☐ Does the proposal work with and through the materials produced by the existing system, rather than assuming a clean slate?

☐ Does it acknowledge the institutional layers—colonial, republican, revolutionary, Soviet, informal—rather than treating only one as authentic?

☐ Does it avoid the varnish-removal fallacy—the assumption that a civil-law architecture exists intact beneath the Marxist-Leninist overlay?
Avoidance of Nostalgic Return

☐ Does the proposal avoid presupposing a return to pre-1959 legal forms, given that sixty-seven years of institutional displacement have made such a return historically irreproducible?

☐ Does it treat diaspora legal expertise as a resource rather than a template, recognizing that diaspora law functions as foreign law in the Cuban institutional context?
Justice as Independent Standard

☐ Does the proposal articulate justice as an independent evaluative criterion, rather than reducing law to either a technical system (pandectistic abstraction) or a political instrument (Marxist-Leninist transmission belt)?

☐ Does it recover the tripartite relationship of law, justice, and jurisprudence—or does it simply substitute one binary (law-politics) for another (law-technique)?
Scholarship and Operative Law

☐ Does the proposal create conditions under which legal scholarship can reach and affect the operative legal order, rather than producing internationally respectable but domestically inert academic output?

☐ Does it ensure scholarly autonomy sufficient to permit genuine doctrinal development, rather than scholarship that operates within a cognitive cage defined by Party doctrine?
Constitutional Coherence

☐ Is the proposal consistent with the 2019 Constitution’s property provisions—or, if it requires constitutional amendment, does it acknowledge and plan for that?

☐ Does it address the internal tension between the constitutional recognition of propiedad privada and the prohibition on concentración de la propiedad? 

The Informal Economy

☐ Does the proposal engage with the institutional-legal cultures of the informal economy—barter systems, trust networks, customary dispute resolution—as indigenous legal development?

☐ Does it avoid the error of imposing a formal framework that destroys functional informal norms without providing a viable substitute?
Stability

☐ Does the proposal account for the "stable state of misery"—the precarious equilibrium sustained by the discipline of scarcity—and avoid destabilizing it without offering a functional alternative?

☐ Does it phase reform to minimize the risk of the kind of dislocation that produced a generation of tragedy in other post-socialist transitions?
International and Claims Exposure

☐ Does the proposal address pending and potential international claims—Helms-Burton Title III litigation, international arbitration, odious-debt arguments—and their interaction with domestic confiscatory instruments?

☐ Does it prepare for the simultaneous challenge of confronting claims from abroad while dismantling a domestic confiscatory apparatus?
Cognitive-Cage Awareness

☐ Does the proposal avoid reproducing a cognitive cage—whether Marxist-Leninist, liberal-democratic, or nostalgic-republican—that constrains the range of institutional possibilities?

☐ Does it acknowledge that none of the currently available frameworks can fully anticipate the institutional forms that a reconstructed Cuban legality may require?

* * * 

The full paper follows below and may be accessed HERE.