Citizens’ participation and associative space

Abstract

Cuba is changing. While caricatured by certain newspaper articles, a complex transformation is unfolding, affecting lifestyles and spiritualities, consumption habits and status symbols, family roles and political cultures. Although the institutional and regulatory frameworks linger behind –more than is advisable– a transformation is underway, rejecting dogma imposed by the neoliberal claudication and bureaucratic inactivity, both forms of historical fatalism. If one wishes to accurately approach the depth of change under way, we can find a privileged and seductive scenario for analysis in associative space (espacio asociativo), which is understood to be the social dimension that hosts relatively autonomous forms of groupings and collective action, outside the political and economic institutions, that channel the voluntary activity of citizens in disparate areas of particular interest, characterized by the logic of reciprocity, solidarity, symmetrical interaction and the defense of common identities.