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TheCuban dissident movement, also known as theCuban democracy movement or theCuban opposition, is apolitical movement inCuba whose for aim is to start ademocratic transition in Cuba. It differs from the early opposition to Fidel Castrowhich occurred from 1959 to 1968, and instead consists of the internal opposition movement birthed by the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976.[1] This opposition later became an active social movement during theSpecial Period in the 1990s, as various civic organizations began jointly calling for a democratic transition in Cuba.[2] The movement is made up of various actors, from conservative democrats who favorfree market economics to left-leaningsocial democrats anddemocratic socialists. All activists typically agree on the need for expanding democratic rights, and some level of legal free enterprise.[3]
ScholarsAviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Alfredo Prieto claim that their 2019 polling shows few Cubans are familiar with dissident leaders or propositions, mostly because top dissidents focus their efforts on demanding the release of friends and relatives from jail, and not on organizing mass movements for general freedoms. They also claim being a dissident is difficult to do in public, because a public dissident group would be "quickly and firmly repressed by security forces".[4] According to theHarvard International Review, dissident groups are weak and usually infiltrated by Cuban state security. Media is totally state-controlled, thus dissidents find it difficult to organize and "Many of their leaders have shown enormous courage in defying the regime. Yet, time and again, the security apparatus has discredited or destroyed them. They do not represent a major threat to the regime."[5]
Some dissident groups in theCuban diaspora received both funding and assistance from theU.S. Intelligence Community during theCold War, which has caused theCommunist Party of Cuba to allege that all dissidents are part of aUnited States strategy to covertly destabilize the Party's control over the country.[6]
Soon after theCuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro announced in a speech given on April 9, 1959, that the elections which were promised to occur after the revolution were to be delayed. OnMay Day, 1960, Fidel Castro would outright condemn elections as corrupt, and cancel all future elections.[7][8][9][10][11]
In the beginning of 1959, Cuban printers unions began demanding that newspapers which were critical of the government add a "coletilla" ("clarification") next to articles that rebuked critical comments in the articles.[12] By the end of 1960, according to political scientistPaul H. Lewis, all opposition newspapers had been closed down and all radio and television stations were under state control.[13] In nearly all areas of government, loyalty to the regime became the primary criterion for all appointments.[14]
On July 26, 1963, Fidel Castro declared that military conscription would be applied universally to all males between ages 16 and 44.[15]Homosexuals as well as other "deviant" groups who were excluded from military conscription, were forced to conduct their compulsory military service in work camps called "Military Units to Aid Production" in the 1960s, and were subjected to political "reeducation".[16][17][18] Some of Castro's military commanders brutalized the inmates.[19]
According to a 2006Human Rights Watch report, theMarxist-LeninistCuban government represses nearly all forms ofpolitical dissent.[20] This control is accomplished by various means:
The island had the second highest number of imprisoned journalists in the world in 2008, second only to thePeople's Republic of China, according to theCommittee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an international press organization.[25] The 2009 paperCan Cuba Change? in theNational Endowment for Democracy'sJournal of Democracy states that about nine-tenths of the populace forms an economically and politically oppressedunderclass and "Using the principles of democracy and human rights to unite and mobilize this vast, dispossessed majority in the face of a highly repressive regime is the key to peaceful change".[26] Working people are a critical source of discontent.[26] The only legaltrade union is controlled by the government and strikes are banned.[26]Afro-Cuban dissidents have also risen, fueled byracism in Cuba.[26]
In 2012,Amnesty International warned that repression of Cuban dissidents was on the rise over the past two years, citing theWilmar Villar hunger strike death, as well as the arrests ofprisoners of conscience Yasmin Conyedo Riveron, Yusmani Rafael Alvarez Esmori, andAntonio Michel and Marcos Máiquel Lima Cruz.[27] The Cuban Commission of Human Rights reported that there were 6,602 detentions of government opponents in 2012, up from 4,123 in 2011.[28]
In 2024, Cuba was described as one of only four "authoritarian regimes" in theAmericas byThe Economist's 2024Democracy Index alongsideVenezuela,Haiti, andNicaragua.[29] Themilitary of Cuba is a central organization; it controls 60 percent of the economy and isRaúl Castro's base.[26]
While an anti-Castro opposition had existed since 1959, it concluded around 1968, with the total consolidation of political authority by Fidel Castro. The rise of a human rights focused opposition within Cuba occurred later with the founding of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights in 1976.[1]
In 1987, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, headed byElizardo Sánchez, demanded a plebiscite and gathered 11,000 signatures for their request. This marked a major shift among dissidents, to start demanding total political change, rather than minor political reforms.[3]
In 1997, a collection of dissident scholars includingFélix Bonne,René Gómez Manzano,Marta Beatriz Roque, andVladimiro Roca, known as the "gang of four", authored a paper titledThe Homeland Belongs To Us All which demanded free speech and plural elections. The "gang of four" were immediately arrested, and spent several years in prison.[30]
During the"Black Spring" in 2003, the regime imprisoned 75 dissidents, including 29 journalists.[31][32][33][34] Their cases were reviewed by Amnesty International who officially adopted them asprisoners of conscience.[35] To the original list of 75 prisoners of conscience resulting from the wave of arrests in spring 2003, Amnesty International added four more dissidents in January 2004. They had been arrested in the same context as the other 75 but did not receive their sentences until much later.[36] These prisoners have since been released in the face of international pressure. Tripartite talks between the Cuban government, the Catholic Church in Cuba and the Spanish government were initiated in spring 2010 in reaction to the controversial death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo in February 2010 following ahunger strike amid reports of massive abuse at the hands of prison staff. These negotiations resulted in a July 2010 agreement that all remaining prisoners of the 'Group of 75' would be freed. Spain offered to receive those prisoners who would agree to be released and immediately exiled together with their families. Of the 79 prisoners of conscience 56 were still behind bars at the time of the agreement. Of the total group, 21 are still living in Cuba today whereas the others are in exile, most of them in Spain. The final two prisoners were released on 23 March 2011.[37]
On Thursday, 10 June 2010, seventy-four of Cuba's dissidents signed a letter to the United States Congress in support of a bill that would lift the US travel ban for Americans wishing to visit Cuba. The signers include blogger Yoani Sanchez and hunger striker Guillermo Farinas, as well as Elizardo Sanchez, head of Cuba's most prominent human rights group andMiriam Leiva, who helped found the Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White, a group of wives and mothers of jailed dissidents. The letter supports a bill introduced on 23 February by Rep. Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, that would bar the president from prohibiting travel to Cuba or blocking transactions required to make such trips. It also would bar the White House from stopping direct transfers between US and Cuban banks. The signers stated that:
We share the opinion that the isolation of the people of Cuba benefits the most inflexible interests of its government, while any opening serves to inform and empower the Cuban people and helps to further strengthen our civil society.[38]
TheCenter for Democracy in the Americas, a Washington-based group supporting the bill, issued a press release stating that "74 of Cuba's most prominent political dissidents have endorsed the Peterson-Moran legislation to end the travel ban and expand food exports to Cuba because in their words it is good for human rights, good for alleviating hunger, and good for spreading information and showing solidarity with the Cuban people. Their letter answers every argument the pro-embargo forces use to oppose this legislation. This, itself, answers the question 'who is speaking for the Cuban people in this debate?' - those who want to send food and Americans to visit the island and stand with ordinary Cubans, or those who don't. If Cuba's best known bloggers, dissidents, hunger strikers, and other activists for human rights want this legislation enacted, what else needs be said?"[39][40] The Center also hosts English[41] as well as the Spanish[42] version of the letter signed by the 74 dissidents.
Mass protests errupted in Cuba on 11 July 2021 and were directed mostly againstCOVID-19 mismanagement, but later also targeted the Cuban government ofMiguel Díaz-Canel. For the first time, there were visible dissident leaders, likeJosé Daniel Ferrer, who was jailed for the next 4 years following the protests.
Food shortage,power outages, and politicalcensorship (including theinternet) caused the eruption of the new wave of protests[43] in, with visible culmination on 17-18 March and 18-22 October 2024, and occasionally lasting in 2025 to another event that worsened Cuban economic conditions:kidnapping ofVenezuelan PresidentNicolás Maduro on 3 January 2026, a successor ofHugo Chávez, who was friendly to the Cuban government and helped with oil to the island following a dissolution of the Soviet Union and aSpecial Period crisis of 1991-2000. Since December 2025, Cubans protest the condition of life, however, these acts of dissent were largely without a centralized leadership and motivated by economic factors, not a political ones, whileAmerican PresidentTrump threatenedDíaz-Canel to "make a deal before it's to late".
In the meantime, opposition leader Ferrer was exiled from the Cuban prison to theUnited States on 13 October 2025, following a brief release from prison on 16 January and rearrest on 29 April.[44]
TheForeign Policy magazine namedYoani Sánchez one of the10 Most Influential Intellectuals of Latin America, the only woman on the list.[45] An article inEl Nuevo Herald by Ivette Leyva Martinez,[46] speaks to the role played by Yoani Sanchez and other young people, outside the Cuban opposition and dissidence movements, in working towards a free and democratic Cuba today:
Amid the paralysis of the dissident movement, bloggers, with Yoani Sánchez in the lead, rebel artists such as the writer Orlando Luís Pardo, and musicians such as Gorki Aguila are a promising sign of growing civic resistance to the Cuban dictatorship. And "el castrismo", without doubt, has taken note. Will they succeed in sparking a popular movement, or at least consciousness of the need for democracy in Cuba? Who knows. The youngest sector of Cuban society is the one least committed to the dictatorship but at the same time the most apolitical, the one most permeated with political skepticism, escapism, and other similar "isms". It would seem, however, that after 50 years of dictatorship, public rejection of that regime is taking on more original and independent forms. Finally, a breeze of fresh, hopeful air.
On 29 March 2009, at Tania Bruguera's performance where a podium with an open mic was staged for people to have one minute of uncensored public speech, Sánchez was among people to publicly criticize censorship in Cuba and said that "the time has come to jump over the wall of control". The government condemned the event.[47][48] Sánchez was then placed under surveillance by the Cuban police.[49]
There are a number of opposition parties and groups that campaign for political change in Cuba. Though amendments to theCuban Constitution of 1992 decriminalized the right to form political parties other than theCommunist Party of Cuba, these parties are not permitted to engage in public political activities on the island.[citation needed]
On 3 April 1972,Pedro Luis Boitel, an imprisoned poet and dissident, declared himself on hunger strike. After 53 days on hunger strike without receiving medical assistance and receiving only liquids, he died of starvation on 25 May 1972. His last days were related by his close friend, poetArmando Valladares. He was buried in an unmarked grave in theCólon Cemetery inHavana.
Guillermo Fariñas did a seven-month hunger strike to protest against the extensiveInternet censorship in Cuba. He ended it in autumn 2006 with severe health problems, although still conscious.[59]Reporters Without Borders awarded its cyber-freedom prize to Fariñas in 2006.[60]
Jorge Luis García Pérez (known as Antúnez) has done hunger strikes. In 2009, following the end of his 17-year imprisonment, Antúnez, his wife Iris, and Diosiris Santana Pérez started a hunger strike to support other political prisoners. Leaders from Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Argentina declared their support for Antúnez.[61][62]
Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an imprisoned activist and dissident, died while on a hunger strike for more than 80 days.[63] Zapata went on the strike in protest against the Cuban government for having denied him the choice of wearing white dissident clothes instead of the designated prisoner uniform, as well as denouncing the living conditions of other prisoners. As part of his claim, Zapata was asking for the prisoners conditions to be comparable to those that Fidel Castro had while incarcerated after his 1953 attack against theMoncada Barracks.[64]
In 2012,Wilmar Villar Mendoza died after a 50+ day hunger strike.[65]
Cuban dissident groups have received millions in funding from the USA government and are considered by the Cuban government to be part of theUnited States strategy for Cuba to destabilize the country.[6][66]
Vice Foreign MinisterCarlos Fernandez de Cossio told Reuters in 2022:
"In any nation, [having people who act as foreign government agents] is illegal, That is precisely what the United States is trying to promote in Cuba today .[The U.S.A is] depressing the standard of living of the population and at the same time pouring millions of US taxpayer dollars into urging people to act against the [Cuban] government,"[6]
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