How to Topple a Socialist Dictatorship in the 21st Century
The Cuban regime is not invincible. It can fall and it will fall. But it does not depend so much on the number of people who protest.
How on earth do you bring down a socialist dictatorship in the 21st century? That’s the question.
It’s not that Cubans are afraid. What Cubans are not is stupid. If you don’t see a reasonable way out of what they’re calling on you to do, you don’t do it. And it’s very easy for someone outside the country to say: “Hey, you, the one inside, take to the streets, let’s see if we can bring down the dictatorship.”
So I want us to analyze this a little, so that we can reach an informed conclusion and so that we know, at least from my point of view, what the right strategy is to fight this regime, which has enslaved us and sucked the life out of us for more than sixty years. And I always talk to you with historical examples, so you know I’m not pulling this out of thin air. This isn’t some Zoroastrian forecast by Ismael. It’s not that I’m a prophet. It’s that it has already happened one way in one place and another way in others.
The first thing we have to know is that the Cuban regime is not invincible. Like the Soviet Union, it can fall, and it will fall. Now, you’ll ask me: so why didn’t it fall when the Soviet Union fell? Because the conditions were different. And those are the conditions that, in some way, also have to be created.
It doesn’t depend so much on the number of people
It doesn’t depend so much on the number of people protesting. It depends more on the conditions of weakness that have been created around the dictatorship and on the political project that has been built around the opposition. Because if it’s done before those conditions are in place, what happens is what happened in Tiananmen Square, in China.
Massive demonstrations: university students, young people, people who were truly looking for change in China, for an opening. And what happened? What was done was to break the Chinese spirit of protest. People realized that in the end they eliminated everyone. And it was erased from the history books, from Wikipedia and from the artificial intelligences of China. That was it. The regime grew stronger and the fighting spirit of the Chinese grew weaker.
And at the same time, what happened in Belarus: close to a million people took to the streets to protest and nothing was achieved.
Does that mean demonstrations don’t work? No. It means that certain circumstances have to be built first.
Skip the rules
Right now, what we need first is to prepare the conditions. What are the conditions? They’re the ones Anne Applebaum describes, for example: we need to start corroding the regime from within. The regime’s orders have to be weakened in people’s daily lives.
You’ll say that’s easy. No, it isn’t easy. For example, in communist Poland you had to register foreign visitors and report them to the police. And one of the things the opposition started doing was to say: “I’m not going to report to anyone. That’s over. Because that’s my private life, and I don’t have to follow orders that are dictatorial, extremist orders from a regime that thinks it’s going to control me.” And do you know what happened? That resistance became so massive that at some point it was impossible to enforce that policy, because you couldn’t jail everyone for skipping a rule.
So, in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Nicaragua, skip the rules that are part of the socialist and communist philosophy, of the one-party philosophy. Skip the rules that force you to sign or to speak at some point, to win a seat or to stay out of trouble, in favor of a socialist revolution you don’t believe in and that has ruined your life, because it’s criminal, because it’s monopolistic and concentrates power, and because it is, at the end of the day, a repressive state and a dictatorship.
It’s very sad that Cubans right now think they have to bang pots in hiding at home, which is fine, but that the next day, when they go to work, they play the revolutionary. They keep the portrait of the Comandante on their desk because they have to, because otherwise they get into trouble, and because they get singled out.
That’s exactly the opposite of what they need to do. If you want, skip the pot-banging, don’t go out into the street to lose yourself in the crowd and say “I want food.” That doesn’t help anyone. It’s encouraging the dictatorship to crack down on all those brave people when they gather, and it keeps them from doing this other thing, which is to start disobeying the regime day to day.
If at your university you have to sign that you’re a revolutionary, the “concept of Revolution,” all those signatures they collect every so often to tie you down psychologically and to show the whole world that Cuba is socialist, you refuse to sign and you accept the consequences. Oh, no, but you’d rather go out into the street one day, come what may, and spend the rest of your days hiding from the regime. The goal, in this case, is the opposite: what Havel says when he talks to you about living in truth.
The neighbor will take a stand too
Cubans have to start telling the truth: “I’m not a revolutionary, because I believe in freedom of thought, because I believe in the dignity of human beings to think freely and to make decisions about their life plans that don’t include the restrictions of a government that meddles even in what you have to say, in what you have to think, in whom you have to respect and whom you have to attack. I’m not going to take part in a march against American imperialism. I don’t believe it. I believe that my main enemy, right now, is the Castroists.” Say it!
Oh, you’ll get into trouble? Yes, you’ll get into trouble, you’ll be marked. But let me tell you something: it’s harder to jail you for that, in a casual conversation, at the CDR, the neighborhood committee, at your university, than for going out into the street with a sign, because they’ll lock you up for five years. And you know that then you won’t be able to say: “I’m not a revolutionary, I’m a person who believes in democracy and in the new Cuba.” Nobody will be able to hear you anymore. That suits them.
We need to start building a resistance that doesn’t put us in positions where it’s easy to lock us up, but that gives us the chance to say: in Cuba there are many people who don’t agree with socialism, who want freedom for Cuba and a Cuban democracy. Then your neighbor will see you and say: “Wow, he thinks like me, and he’s not afraid, and he says it, and he takes a stand.” The neighbor, too, at some point, will take a stand, and that’s how everyone will start taking a stand. And that corrodes the regime.
But that is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. That doesn’t bring down the dictatorship. It matters, though. Why? Erica Chenoweth, one of those who have studied the fall of dictatorships in the 20th and 21st centuries, says that protests of this kind are more effective in the long run. Because when you concentrate the whole population into a single group of brave people who throw themselves into the streets, then you have a better chance of locking them all up and punishing them with a much stronger argument in your favor. But if you start locking people up just for giving their opinion at the CDR, for not going to the demonstrations you call, for speaking out on social media from Cuba, you start losing strength and international credibility.
The regime has to be isolated
And losing the people’s support doesn’t always mean losing power, unfortunately. As Anne Applebaum says in her book Autocracy, Inc., most dictatorships today stay in place not because the people agree with them, but because power, international relations and trade are being conducted among different autocracies around the world, among different dictatorships. Sometimes they have completely different ideologies. There are Islamic dictatorships that have nothing to do with the Russian oligarchy. And yet the Russian oligarchy and those dictatorships trade, help one another, share intelligence, share resources.
Venezuela, for example: the chavista dictatorial government crushed the protests with Chinese technology. China sold it to them and made it available. And the surveillance cameras China uses to watch its own dissidents, it gave those to Venezuela too.
As I told you in the previous video, you’re not fighting only against the Cuban dictatorship. You’re fighting against everyone who supports it too: Pablo Iglesias, Irene Montero, Lula, China, everyone who in some way props up the regime.
The regime has to be isolated, because if Belarus managed to crush the mass protests, it was because they weren’t isolated. They had a number of businessmen and dictators around the world who benefited from keeping them in power. We need it to cost those people dearly to support the Cuban government, for the political cost to be high.
That takes us to another step: we need to organize the opposition, which right now is scattered. We are, as a friend used to tell me, a hydra with many heads.
The opposition figure you dislike the most
More than eight authors have studied how dictatorships have fallen from 1900 to 2024, roughly. And they’ve all reached the same conclusion: the opposition needs unity. If we ourselves are fighting each other, we won’t be able to defeat our enslavers, who are the Castroists, the regime. And they know it. They act with the goal of keeping us divided.
I was amazed at how many people said in the comments: “This guy is Fidel Castro’s grandson,” because they didn’t like the way I think or the proposals I was making. And it’s fair not to like them, because within the opposition, among those of us who want democracy and freedom for Cuba, there are going to be dozens of proposals, sometimes contrary to one another. But if we don’t learn that the first purpose is Cuba’s freedom, that we can even have different plans for how that freedom is achieved, that some of us may be wrong, that we can correct course in a given case, because in the end we’re all pursuing the same purpose, if we don’t behave as a united bloc, we’re already losing from the start.
Think of the opposition figure, the fighter for Cuba’s freedom, you dislike the most. I’m going to think of mine right now: that’s my ally, and I have to become his ally, and he has to see me that way. And once Cuba is free, then we’ll have our disputes. There will be Cubans on the left who didn’t want a dictatorship like the Cuban one but want a left-wing government, and there will be Cubans on the right, those of us who want a different kind of government.
You have to be able to tell things apart, to set levels, to say: “My enemy is the Cuban dictatorship, because it’s the one that has demolished every kind of hope in Cuba.” And from there, I can have disagreements right now with those who share the goal of Cuba’s freedom, but we’ll leave those disagreements for later, because freedom of expression is tested with the person you detest the most, not with the one you’d most like to hear speak.
I know many people in the comments are going to tell me: “I don’t hang out with lefties.” Neither do I, in the sense that I would prefer Cuba’s government to be a right-wing government, one that prioritizes merit and personal effort, one that doesn’t force a fake, hypocritical solidarity that ends up impoverishing the people. I get it. The problem is what you want: a right-wing dictatorship or a democracy? We need to live together. And the lefty will say: “I don’t want anything to do with those fascist types.” My brother, if we don’t manage to unite with the goal of bringing down the dictatorship and achieving democracy in Cuba, I assure you we’ll have sixty more years.
And that’s what another author recommends, George Ayittey. He says it clearly: we need a council of elders. Not elders in the sense of being old. We need people who represent different parts of the opposition and come together with the aim of mobilizing different groups toward a single goal.
A house divided against itself
Then you’ll say: “Yes, but there are infiltrators inside the opposition.” And it’s true. But do you know what Protestant pastors in Cuba did, and still do, with infiltrators? They start the sermon like this: “I know you are here because the government sent you, but it’s really God who has put you in this place so that you can hear his gospel, because otherwise you would never have heard it. And I urge you to turn to Jesus Christ, to become a Christian, because in the end that will be the best change for your life.” And that’s it: he preached it and that was the end of it. Nobody goes around thinking: “Could so-and-so be from the government?” Because, for those who don’t know and for those in other countries, in Cuba spies from Cuban intelligence really are planted inside the churches, so they can see what the pastor is preaching and what the religious community thinks. It’s insane.
But the point is that this strategy works better than the brothers pointing fingers at one another because they don’t know who is who. So you say: “Yes, they’ve infiltrated the opposition.” Fine, but the more you act as if they’ve infiltrated the opposition, the more harm you do to the opposition, because everyone suspects everyone and goes their own way without uniting.
Forget who is who and think about the project. Does this project attack the dictatorship or benefit it? Is this person seeking division, or do they have a project? And not everyone who has a project you dislike is helping the dictatorship.
You may be wrong, and I may be wrong. The point is that without unity there is no change, there is no freedom. There’s no way, because there’s no coordination and because, on top of that, we wear ourselves out fighting each other. Or, as the Lord Jesus Christ said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
When you negotiate, it usually works
If all you do is threaten those who are propping up the regime right now, they’ll keep propping it up. Because you’re such a tough guy, such a hard man. In sixty years we haven’t achieved anything with that style. And yet in Hungary it worked, and in other places, in Poland. When you negotiate, it usually works.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita explains that, unlike in a democracy, in a dictatorship you only have to please a group of powerful people, who are the ones keeping you in power. But it’s a small group. It’s not like democracies, where you need public opinion on your side.
So in the Soviet Union, the people who really held up power, the top brass, those who had made money, the people of influence who kept in place the ones you saw in power, the socialist politicians, realized that they needed an opening to the democratic world in order to trade better, and that a transition could even benefit them. That allowed them to stop resisting the opposition or to stop giving the regime the support they used to give it.
That didn’t happen in Cuba. There wasn’t that pot of gold to steal, the way there was in the Soviet Union.
Look, to give you an example: in Hungary, many of the socialists ended up owning companies. In Poland, at first, they believed that was the path that would be followed, and in some way they negotiated a sharing of power with the opposition.
But for Cuba to have at least the opening that Poland and Hungary later had, and for us to have the food a Hungarian or a Pole has, we would have to give certain guarantees to people we can’t stand and to people who have done terrible things to us. That doesn’t mean forgiving the torturers or those who have killed people in Cuba. It means that those who have enabled the regime must be given certain guarantees at some point, because those guarantees allow them to switch sides or let their interests shift.
Am I the one saying this? No. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita says it. Change has to be encouraged in that group that holds power from the shadows too.
Now you’ll ask me: in Cuba, who is that group holding power from the shadows? The military. “No, but I can’t forgive the top military brass.” At the very least you have to give the middle and lower ranks of the military the chance to switch sides at the moment when there really are mass protests, because the conditions are in place and favorable for them to be called, because there’s an organized opposition.
You have to give those middle ranks and those top ranks, and those people with money, who also have accounts in other countries, in tax havens, the chance to realize, not that they’re going to keep democratic Cuba, because we don’t want a Russia of oligarch tycoons either, but at least that they’ll be given some guarantees. Because otherwise that hard core will never have the incentive to come over to your side and to bring down everything that Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro stand for.
It creates grandchildren who become socialists
No guarantees for those who torture. But torture isn’t “he punched me a couple of times, kicked me a couple of times on the ground,” and for that I have to send him to the firing squad. No. Because that revenge and that blood, do you know what they create later? They create grandchildren who become socialists. And they don’t become socialists because they believe in socialism. They become socialists because you shot their grandfather, who had kicked you a couple of times on the ground, and that turns into another revolution that threatens us two generations from now. Let’s not be stupid.
We need to think with our heads and with cold blood. In this case it’s very hard. There are victims who do need retribution, a fair and proportionate retribution. The person who did make a decision and put you in prison also has to serve time and take responsibility for jailing a person and taking years of their life simply for thinking differently. And that person is part of the regime.
So we have to define what we want. Do we want to keep shouting, saying four swear words, posting on social media “down with the dictatorship, all of you are going to pay,” and that’s it, for sixty more years? Or do we want to establish certain strategies that have already worked and that can take us where we want to go, to Cuba’s freedom? We have to make up our minds.
We don’t have to negotiate with everyone. There are many who have to take responsibility for their actions, but we do have to negotiate with some, who have to help us so that those others take it.
It would be a mistake not to protest
There are moments when it would be a mistake not to go out and protest, because freedom is just within reach. When we have an organized opposition, an international structure with well-defined alliances, and a Cuban people who not only want to free themselves from the regime but also have a structure of thought and a narrative that allows them to understand their reality from the standpoint of freedom and democracy, and not what the Castroists have told them. When we have conditions in the country that ensure a victory would later turn into progress toward freedom and democracy, and that a protest and a victory would not end up putting another caudillo in power. When it already costs the regime’s allies a lot to support it, because the political cost is very high. Under those conditions, a protest or a general strike would be very important, and not supporting them would be a mistake.
You’ll tell me: “Hey, Ismael, but those are too many steps. How long is this going to take?” It’s been going on for more than sixty years, and if we keep fooling around, it will go on for sixty more. This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes following a series of steps and building a series of things. I wish it could be built in a year, but maybe it takes us six, maybe ten, maybe seven. I don’t know, but if we don’t start now, we won’t get any results.
We need certain strategies: a united opposition, people in Cuba living in truth day to day and showing that the socialists are fewer than those of us who want freedom. And once all these conditions are in place, any kind of organized protest, of labor strike or general strike, and other things I can’t tell you here, that’s when they’ll be effective. But if you spend your bullets too soon, you won’t reach your goal.
Say what you are and what you are not
Above all, we need the brave ones in Cuba, those who are really going to take the initiative to be part of this movement, to start living in truth. That’s the only thing you have to do. Nobody is asking you to go out into the street to protest. Nobody is going to ask you to do something that most of those outside haven’t done. You’re being asked, instead of gathering in a place where they can arrest you and where it will be easier to punish you, to take the risk of telling the truth and of starting to live the truth, like Havel. And study Havel’s book, if you want: The Power of the Powerless. Look for it, I recommend it.
As Havel tells you, simply say what you are and what you are not. Stop supporting the regime wherever you are. At the CDR, when you need to speak, say it: “No. This is a dictatorship.” Don’t go to political rallies, or to the support marches, and much less to the acts of repudiation against opposition members who stand up and try to bring about change in Cuba.
We Cubans are not stupid
And those of us who are outside have to unite. I understand that it’s hard to believe in a Cuba different from the one we’ve lived for more than sixty years, and I understand there have been thousands of protests, thousands of dissidents. However, I’m not asking you to believe in something out of nowhere because I say so. I’m asking you to think about history, about the recent history of the 21st century and that of the 20th. Dictatorships are not eternal.
And you can live through that transition. You can enjoy it, or your children can, because you see that they have a future in Cuba, a free Cuba. It’s not only a matter of blind faith. It’s a matter of the fact that it can be done. And the regime has made us believe it can’t be done, and it has led us to a point of division and of foolish strategies that have made us see that, that way, it can’t be done.
But if we study history and see this, there are ways in which dictatorships have fallen. And we Cubans are not stupid. We are no less. Venezuelans are no less either, nor are Nicaraguans. Those of us who are prisoners of these socialist dictatorships can organize and build an international structure that manages, through our unity, to carry out certain actions that end up bringing down the dictatorship and giving our land the breathing room it needs to produce young people, people who can have their own life projects and contribute to the whole world.
The video, in Spanish, on YouTube: ¿Cómo se tumba una dictadura socialista en el siglo XXI?
This is a translation of the original text in Spanish, made with the help of AI. Read the original in Spanish.
