ABSTRACT
In an evaluation of the Cuban Revolution it is pertinent to delineate the political program by which its results are to be measured and, if that original program underwent radical changes, to examine the necessity and legitimacy of those changes. As the Cuban leaders had predicted, the axiom of “limited sovereignty” for Latin American countries relative to Washington’s interests prevailed once again with regard to the triumphant revolution. On the national level, Cuba was economically dependent on North American technology, financing, products, raw materials, and markets for its development. The hostile and threatening reality that socialism had to face definitively marked its praxis, causing dramatic adjustments to the theoretical project that affected the course of its development. The Cuban democratic system includes legal equality but goes beyond it, encompassing as well the economic and social rights of citizens without which the exercise of legal equality is basically enjoyed by only a minority of the people.
