It has not been uncommon for the bridge between dictatorship and democracy to be built with votes. Under military autocracies in Spain, Uruguay and Chile sustained electoral processes functioned as a hinge in the transition, or contributed decisively to weakening the old regime while ushering in the new one.
Venezuela can already be included on that list, because what has happened so far under the baton of María Corina Machado, whether or not she ends up in Miraflores, will leave el chavismo weaker than ever.
Unfortunately, this electoral path, possible under military dictatorships, is not a possibility under totalitarian regimes such as Cuba’s, as the elements essential to organize an alternative to the power structure are lacking.
In Venezuela there are elections because, although they tried to mimic Castro's totalitarian methods, they never managed to demolish that society as completely as Castroism did in Cuba.
Though el castrochavismo tried, it was unable to eradicate the independent press, which, like a weed, resurfaced after recurrent Bolivarian purges. Nor was it able to monopolize education in order to use it as a brainwashing machine. And, although it copied institutions forged in Cuba, such as state unions, and the CDR, it failed to replace Venezuela's civic organizations (neighborhood, professional, fraternal, labor, etc.), which survived, responding to their own dynamics and interests, not the Government's.
Blackmail, terror, prison, exile, kidnapping, torture, murder, libel, slander and bribery were not enough for el chavismo to utterly dominate politics, as opposition parties - sometimes strong, sometimes weak, but always legal, and combative - survived in the country.
The difference is that neither Chávez nor Maduro were able to eliminate private property in Venezuela. And, because people there own things, society has endured as an entity independent of the State, thus preventing the Bolivarian dictatorship from evolving into a totalitarian one, as happened in Cuba, where a charismatic psychopath who promised the change that people asked for, which gives rise to a subconscious sense of helplessness against power. And then there was guidance and funding provided by the USSR, which served to pulverize Cubans, reducing them to slaves of the State in a socialist society.
Soviet subsidies replaced national productivity, allowing Fidel Castro to eliminate private property without inducing the economic collapse that this normally entails, guaranteeing him decades of stability to shore up this totalitarianism, which is still being suffered.
While el chavismo is supported by arms, and the purchase of loyalties, Castroism coasts off the inertia of having eliminated property, as without private property there is no civil society, and without civil society there can be no viable opposition, only isolated actors that easily be quashed.
Invisible chains still bind Cubans to a regime to which they submit, not for fear of the policeman who patrols their neighborhood, but rather the policeman that patrols their minds, as Castroism replaced a morality based on good and evil with a socialist one that makes them feel discomfort, stress and even guilt when they even think about defying the State.
Although what happened in Venezuela cannot serve as an example for Cuba, there is an extremely relevant point that should be understood and assumed, with María Corina Machado and Edmundo González having set an example in this regard: the hijackers of homelands must be offered a convenient way out, or they will cling more to power even more fiercely.
One cannot aspire to a Caribbean Nuremberg, because that is only achieved by winning a war. The Castros, Díaz-Canel, Marrero, Ramiro Valdés and thousands of others at different levels will probably never be held accountable their crimes, and we will have to be ready to even legitimize the loot they have plundered from the country, as giving them a safe and profitable exit will be price to pay for freedom and a peaceful transition; that is, less suffering for the people.
Castroism's refusal to liberate the economy is owing to the fact that it knows that the absence of private property is what prevents the rebirth of any kind of civil society, but the cost of this prohibition is a dangerous misery that could blow up, violently. There is no political balance in Cuba without an international benefactor to prop up a regime that, without resources, is devolving from a totalitarian regime into military dictatorship.
The military always relies on force to repress civil society and, more interested in dollars than in ideologies, in order to continue lining their pockets they need to continue exploiting emigration (a less and less lucrative business) or to allow more private property (confident that they will be able to control civil society by force), thereby boosting internal productivity.
If a collapse does not occur sooner, the resurgence of Cuban civil society, based on a very imperfect foundation of property rights, will take years to put the island in a situation similar to that of Venezuela. But even in this case, let's not forget that freedom must be paid for, and the more dollars and forgiveness the criminals are afforded, the less blood will have to be shed.
