CIVIL SOCIETY IN CUBA: COMPETING VISIONS OF THE GOOD SOCIETY
by
Dr. Douglas Friedman
Associate Professor of Political Science
Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC 29424
friedmand@cofc.edu
www.cofc.edu/~friedman/chili.html
Paper presented at the Southern Political Science Association Meeting
New Orleans, LA, January 5-8, 2005
It is very difficult to jump right into the middle of this discussion without some prior background. A good
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historical overview of Cuba is Richard Gott, Cuba: a New History, New Haven:Yale University Press,
2004. For an overview of the recent situation see, Antonio Carmona Báez, State Resistance to
Globalization in Cuba, London:Pluto Press, 2004. For the most comprehensive, though highly anti-Marxist
study see, Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato , Civil Society and Political Theory, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T.
Press, 1992; see also Douglas Friedman, “Civil Society in Contemporary Cuba: US Policy and the Cuban
Reality,” in Canada, the US and the Caribbean: Counterpoint Cuba. Edited by Michele Zebich-Knos and
Heather Nicol. Lexington Press, forthcoming.
This short paper will be an attempt to try and clarify a few issues that arise
out of the discussion of civil society in Cuba As with almost any discussion of
Cuba, it is difficult to keep the discussion entirely academic because of US
hostility to the Cuban revolution. It is doubly difficult with regard to the issue of
civil society, because since the early 1990’s, creating a “civil society” based
opposition to the current regime in Cuba has been a major - if not the major – leg
of US policy aimed at undermining and replacing that regime.
Except for true believers of one sort or the other, the issue of civil society
in general is still a contentious one. Here, I will not try to discuss all (or even
most) of the ways the concept has been employed, its history, the multitude of
controversies, etc. These have been extensively discussed elsewhere and another
such review would only complicate m