Abstract

During the 1990s, the dissident movement in Cuba has grown in effectiveness, popular participation, and intemational support. While facing a first-generation totalitarian regime, with a sophisticated repressive apparatus, the civic movement in the Island has persevered and grown in spite of constant persecution, offering hope for political, social, and economic change from within Cuba itself. This essay seeks to provide a brief overview of the civic movement in Cuba covering its social origins and growth, theoretical repercussions of its existence, major leaders and initiatives, its relationship with the Cuban exile community, its ideological history and development, intemational support, and its current status in light of recent events affecting political conditions in the Island. Born initially out of dissident cells within Cuba's revolutionary movement and the Communist Party, the dissident movement in Cuba has transformed itself into a microcosm of a re-emerging civil society through which Cuban citizens are reclaiming their sovereignity and constructing the blueprint for a new Republic. The Varela Project is of particular significance for the development of the civic movement in Cuba.