COMMENTARY A new Cuba poll should make the U.S. — especially U.S. Cubans — realize that without any democratic past to refer to, Cubans will prioritize economic improvement over political change.
The British novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote that “we possess nothing certainly except the past.”
That’s a powerful statement about the importance of human memory. And it’s a powerful reminder about the two countries that engross U.S. Latin America policy right now: Venezuela and Cuba.
One has memory of democracy. One doesn’t.
It helps explain polls inside Venezuela, where the U.S. military removed dictator Nicolás Maduro in January — and where some 90% now want new democratic elections held this year, because they say it’s “urgent” that acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the rest of Maduro’s holdover regime leave power ASAP.
It also helps explain a new poll of Cubans in Cuba, whose regime President Donald Trump is laboring to topple with new sanctions screws, including a de facto oil blockade. The survey finds most Cubans care more about remedying their economic disaster than about removing their political dictatorship — which contradicts what more conservative Cubans in Miami have ideologically insisted for decades.
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Until this year, Venezuelans had lived under an authoritarian socialist revolution for 27 years, first under the late Hugo Chávez, then Maduro. They’re still living under a remnant of that brutal system with Rodríguez, whom the U.S. keeps in power because she’s cooperating with Trump’s project to control Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
But that number — 27 years — matters. The median age in Venezuela is 30, meaning a good swath of the population has at least some memory of the democracy that functioned there for four decades before 1999.
God knows it functioned imperfectly — the monstrous corruption it indulged prompted Chávez’s election — but it existed. Its free elections, free enterprise, free expression and peaceful transfers of power were there for the remembering.
And — now — for the restoring.
When you can think about something besides where your next meal comes from, you can care more about when the next political prisoner is released.
There is no such memory in Cuba. When Fidel Castro’s communist revolution took power 67 years ago, it simply replaced another dictatorship, Fulgencio Batista’s.
Keep that in mind as you pore over the new Cuba poll conducted by Vanderbilt University-AmericasBarometer and Florida International University’s Latin America and Caribbean Center.
Endless blackouts
In the online query of more than a thousand Cubans on the bankrupt island, a full three-fourths said that for now their economic problems — including endless electricity blackouts and food shortages — matter more than their political repression.
In fact, only 7% cited their political shackles as a primary concern.
Three-fourths did blame the regime for their economic catastrophe; most did say it trashes their civil and human rights. Still, 69% prioritized economic recovery — even, they said, if it means delaying political reform.
Even more striking: only 38% said democracy is a preferable form of government.
FIU’s Jose Miguel Cruz told me those findings indicate two challenging realities. The first, of course, is that lack of any democratic past for today’s Cubans. The second, he said:
“Cubans for seven decades have been told that what they have is democracy.
“So when they hear the word democracy, it’s not necessarily what the rest of us hear, because their whole understanding of it has been so contaminated.”
The absence and perversion of democracy in the Cuban imagination is a factor too many Cubans in Miami forget. And that’s especially evident when they shout down any suggestion that Cubans in Cuba feel that being able to buy meat is as important as being allowed to voice opinions.
Both matter. But Cruz pointed to another intriguing finding in the Vanderbilt/FIU poll: Cubans who receive remittance cash from family abroad, or those who have private businesses that provide more income, were also more likely to see political change as a priority.
Having the luxury to think about something besides where your next meal will come from can make you more disposed to care about when the next political prisoner will be released.
So Miami should stop baying for Cubans' economic deprivation as a means of squeezing the regime — and start boosting their economic well-being as a means of challenging the regime.
It should concede the existence of Cuba’s fledgling private sector — the only thing that works there — and help it do more business with the U.S., especially since Cuba’s rotted regime is giving it freer rein .
Filling Cubans’ stomachs with chicken just might make it easier to fill their heads with democracy.
