I am not a legal scholar. My reading of the Constitution is one of a citizen conscious of her responsibility and commitment to the future of the country.
In the first place, I refer to Fidel´s call to change everything that must be changed, taking into account factors that characterize the times in which we live. The analysis of the context that defines our current situation includes the international panorama and elements of our society (…)
Seen as a whole, the Constitution articulates our projections for the future and the demands of the present, keeping alive the perspective of a Communist society and establishing the conceptual foundations for a legal body that must reflect changes occurring in Cuban society in terms of forms of property and guarantees for foreign investment.
Counterpoised to the free market, it affirms the state’s prerogatives in protecting the people’s sovereignty. It established norms that must prevail in the functioning of our courts, and identifies the judicial system as the guarantor of the people’s assets and of individual rights.
It preserves free, universal access t public health and education. And above all, concedes absolute priority to respect for human dignity, in the tradition of José Martí (…)
Consistent with the above, a substantive portion of its articles are devoted to the formulation of the rights and duties of citizens, on the basis of respect for human beings. It condemns all forms of discrimination based on race, ethnic origin, social origin, gender, disability, and sexual orientation. The concept of family is updated by recognizing its diversity of forms and manners of constitution. It legitimizes an existing reality with longstanding roots, but hidden under the cloak of hypocrisy, a source of lacerating prejudices inherited from the darkest area of our cultural tradition (…)
As our Carta Magna, the Constitution establishes the fundamental principles that must govern the society we are constructing. It is the conceptual starting point for complementary legislation that will begin to be developed immediately and which will, most likely, require the revision of our Civil and Criminal Codes. It outlines the rules of an imperative, serving as a guide to action to correct latent problems in our current reality tainted by bureaucracy, the inadequate relation of prices to wages, bribery, corruption, complicity, apathy, and complacency before what is poorly done.Conceived with the participation of all and for the good of all, the debate on the Constitution was a concrete exercise of democracy, which contributed proposals that improved the original version. No less important was its contribution to the development of citizens who are conscious, responsible, and committed to the country’s future, a decisive step for the assumption of the necessary willingness to submit to the rule of law, for the benefit of the nation and of all those who share the island.