ABSTRACT
Forty years of dictatorship represents a tremendous hurdle to overcome. The corrosive features of the communist economic system are such that even after a decade of German reunification, the East German area lags far behind West Germany in economy and life style. The idea of a "transition to democracy" ballooned frequently and easily in Washington circles represents a mechanistic way of thinking. Democracy requires in place a number of characteristics in order to be operative: some are available in Cuba, others not. Totalitarian regimes have a way of being self-contradictory: They want production, but have no mechanism to fairly distribute the results of production–that is the failure of planned systems and the success of market systems. Democracy is essentially a civil process–involving a balance of executive, legislative and judicial functions, all responsible to larger public. Cuba under Castro, and some time before that, has been a militarized regime operating under the cloak of socialism and communism.
