Hegemony, Transition, and Rupture:

Democracy, Revolution, and Hegemonic Asphyxiation:

A Comparative Analysis of Political Transitions in Mexico, Nicaragua, Spain, and Cuba

under U.S. Foreign Policy

Expanded and revised edition — Four comparative cases with primary and secondary academic sources

Declassified Documents 2026 · U.S. State Department Archives · Historiographical Sources

Summary

This study examines, through a comparative lens, the political trajectories of Mexico, Nicaragua, Spain, and Cuba as shaped by U.S. hegemony during the Cold War and the post-bipolar era. The theoretical framework draws on comparative transitology — particularly the school of O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead^[1] and Huntington's "third wave" typology^[2] — and argues that successful democratic transitions depend less on civic virtue than on the structured management of entrenched economic interests. The study incorporates recently declassified diplomatic documents — including the 23-F archives released on 25 February 2026 — alongside canonical academic literature on each case.

Methodological Note: On Self-Designations

The comparative analysis that follows adopts a deliberate methodological principle: all parties are named using their own self-designations, not the pejorative labels imposed by their adversaries. This is not a value judgement on the legitimacy of any actor; it is a requirement of analytical rigour. Comparative political science demands terminological precision free of the rhetorical freight each side carries. Accordingly, the government born of the 1959 Revolution is referred to as "the Cuban Revolution" or "the Cuban State" — its own preferred terms — and not "the Castro regime" or "communist dictatorship." The exile community is called "the Cuban diaspora" or "the Cuban exile community" — terms it proudly claims — and not "the Miami mafia." The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is referred to by its official name, not "narco-dictatorship." The CIA-financed forces are called "the Contra" or "the Nicaraguan Resistance" — their own designations — and not exclusively "mercenaries" or "freedom fighters." The anti-Francoist forces are called "the democratic opposition." This principle of symmetrical naming preserves the critical distance indispensable to serious academic work.

Introduction: The Geopolitical Architecture of Regime Change

The structural evolution of political regimes throughout the twentieth century and the early decades of the twenty-first cannot be analysed in isolation; it must be understood within the global hegemonic architecture dictated by U.S. foreign policy. Examining the divergent political trajectories of Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Spain reveals a deep comparative matrix showing how domestic political transitions are shaped, constrained, or accelerated by external geopolitical imperatives. Historically, the United States has prioritised regional stability, the containment of anti-systemic radicalism, and the preservation of global capitalist integration over ideological purity in governance.

This global strategic doctrine has produced diametrically opposed outcomes depending on the internal structural conditions of each state. As Guillermo O'Donnell argues, the difference between regimes cannot be reduced to a simple democracy-autocracy dichotomy; it requires attention to the nature of pacts, the role of the armed forces, and the preservation — or destruction — of property rights.^[1]

In Mexico, U.S. foreign policy accommodated the prolonged authoritarian stability of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa famously described in 1990 as "the perfect dictatorship,"^[3] specifying it was "the permanence not of one man, but of a party." Spain's democratic transition after Franco's death in 1975 became the paradigmatic "negotiated rupture" — one that succeeded precisely because it structurally guaranteed the outgoing authoritarian elite's physical, legal, and economic survival, built on deliberate historical amnesia — the Pact of Forgetting — strongly backed by the U.S. once the restored monarchy proved able to maintain anti-communist stability within the Western bloc.

Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution offers a third, historically singular trajectory: a revolutionary government that, subjected to the most intense hegemonic pressure in Central American history, accepted the democratic rules of the game, lost, and — precisely through that dignified electoral defeat — guaranteed its long-term political survival and eventual return to power. It is, in transitological terms, the most counterintuitive and most instructive case for understanding institutional resistance under hegemonic aggression.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959, by contrast, represents a total systemic rupture. The structural impossibility of applying the Spanish "consensus model" to contemporary Cuba lies in the absolute historical divergence: while Spain's transition rested on a mutual agreement to forgive and forget, codified in the 1977 Amnesty Law, the Cuban exile community — empowered by the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 — demands full property restitution and relentless retributive justice. This external pressure creates an inescapable existential threat for Cuba's current ruling elite, making a peaceful, elite-led democratic transition structurally improbable.

I. Theoretical Framework: Transitology and Hegemony

Samuel P. Huntington, in The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1991), identified three principal transition patterns: transformation (top-down change by regime elites), replacement (regime collapse and opposition takeover), and transplacement (joint negotiation between reformist regime figures and moderate opposition). Post-Francoist Spain represents this third model with paradigmatic fidelity.^[2]

O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (1986), introduced "liberalisation" as a precondition of democratisation, and stressed the crucial role of elite "pacts" as risk-management mechanisms. Their analysis underscores that authoritarian regimes lacking negotiated exit routes tend to resist democratisation until collapse — or to perpetuate themselves indefinitely.^[1]

Spanish political scientist Paloma Aguilar Fernández, in Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy (1996) and Políticas de la memoria y memorias de la política (2008), demonstrated empirically that the Pact of Forgetting was not merely a conjunctural political decision, but a structural mechanism responding to a traumatic collective fear of a repeat of the Civil War. This fear moderated both reformist elites and the communist opposition, explaining the PCE's acquiescence to ideological concessions that would otherwise have been inexplicable.^[4]

II. The Mexican Paradigm: Institutionalisation, Stability, and Hegemonic Accommodation

The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) predated the Cold War, but its institutional consequences defined Mexico's relationship with U.S. hegemony throughout the twentieth century. Unlike Cuba, where revolution led to a Soviet-aligned socialist state, revolution in Mexico was gradually co-opted and domesticated by a political elite that formed the PRI in 1929.

Mario Vargas Llosa captured the paradox at the "La experiencia de la libertad" forum (Televisa, 30 August 1990):^[3]

"The perfect dictatorship is not communism. It is not the USSR. It is not Fidel Castro. The perfect dictatorship is Mexico [...] It has the characteristics of dictatorship: the permanence not of one man, but of a party. And of a party that is immovable."

U.S. foreign policy toward Mexico during PRI hegemony was characterised by deep pragmatism. Although the system lacked the fundamentals of competitive liberal democracy, Washington found in the PRI an indispensable ally guaranteeing three pillars: inviolability of the southern border; gradual openness to foreign capital; and the relentless suppression of far-left insurgent movements during the Cold War. Mexico's eventual transition to multiparty democracy in 2000 succeeded because the outgoing elite's economic interests were fully aligned with the global market and protected by the new institutional framework, removing any incentive for political retribution — a structural condition identical to that which made the Spanish transition viable.^[5]

III. The Nicaraguan Paradigm: Revolution, Electoral Defeat, and the Paradoxical Survival of a Revolution Project

If the Spanish case represents the canonical model of top-down negotiated transition, and the Cuban case represents the revolutionary rupture that forecloses its own opening, Nicaragua offers a third historically singular type: a revolution that, under the most intense coercive pressure in Central American history, voluntarily accepted the democratic rules of the game, lost, and — precisely because of that dignified defeat at the ballot box — guaranteed its long-term political survival and eventual return to power. In transitological terms, it is the most counterintuitive case and the most instructive for understanding institutional resistance under hegemonic aggression.

3.1. The Revolution Under Siege

The FSLN took power in July 1979 after overthrowing the Somoza dynasty and inaugurated a revolution that attempted to transcend the Cold War binary: neither enclave capitalism nor Soviet Marxism-Leninism, but a heterodox synthesis of mixed economy, bounded pluralism, and redistributive social justice. The revolution received its first democratic ratification in the November 1984 elections — judged sufficiently free and competitive by LASA international observers — in which Ortega secured 67% of the vote.^[19]

The Reagan administration's response was a multidimensional strategy of asphyxiation unprecedented in the region. In 1981, Reagan authorised an initial $19.8 million to fund the Contra — formed largely from former Somoza National Guardsmen — triggering the Iran-Contra scandal. A total trade embargo followed in May 1985, combined with systematic blocking of World Bank and IDB loans. By 1989, Nicaraguan wage workers retained less than 10% of their real 1980 purchasing power,^[20] inflation had reached 36,000% — a world record — and the economy was in collapse.^[9]

This multidimensional crisis led the Sandinista government to accept the Arias Peace Plan (1987 Nobel Peace Prize), which required free elections with international observation. Historian James Dunkerley, writing in the New Left Review after the February 1990 elections, notes that the Arias Plan gave Ortega "an honourable way out of his predicament" without appearing to surrender to Washington.^[21]

3.2. 25 February 1990: The Defeat That Legitimised

More than 3,000 international observers — including UN and OAS missions and a delegation led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Argentine President Raúl Alfonsín — supervised the most observed elections in Central American history to that date.^[21] The National Opposition Union (UNO), financed with $9 million from the U.S. Congress plus $5 million channelled to the opposition in preceding months, presented Violeta Barrios de Chamorro as presidential candidate.^[6]

The result was a crushing defeat: Chamorro secured 55% against Ortega's 41%. The FSLN had won 67% in 1984; it had lost nearly half its electoral support in six years of war and economic sanctions. Researcher Paul Oquist, who had directed the FSLN's own pre-election polling, identified three decisive factors: U.S. aggression, the new post-Berlin Wall international climate, and the government's inability to fulfil social promises under the accumulated weight of war.^[20]

The acceptance of results was neither automatic nor free of internal pressure. Researcher Eline van Ommen (LSE) documents that on the night of 25 February, Supreme Electoral Council president Mariano Fiallos Oyanguren faced direct pressure within the Sandinista apparatus to announce falsified results in the first four tally sheets. Fiallos chose to read the real results — two precincts for each party — sealing the trend. Antonio Lacayo later declared: "Without Mariano Fiallos there would have been no democratic transition in 1990."^[6]

It was Jimmy Carter who played the most delicate diplomatic role that night: negotiating with Ortega the public acceptance of results and guaranteeing that the transition would include structural safeguards for FSLN institutional interests. Carter Center records confirm he mediated directly to ensure the FSLN retained effective control of the Armed Forces and security services during the transition — a first-order structural concession parallel in its logic to the preservation of vested interests in the Spanish transition. Carter later described it as "the price of their cooperation" and "the first requirement of peace."^[11]

3.3. The Logic of the Dignified Defeat: Why Losing Was Winning

What the FSLN preserved in defeat proved more valuable in the long run than what it ceded. Through transition negotiations mediated by Carter, the FSLN retained: effective control of the Sandinista People's Army (reformed but not purged); hegemonic presence in trade unions, agricultural cooperatives, and grassroots organisations; an intact national party structure with territorial implantation across the country; and ownership of dozens of companies and media outlets acquired during the revolutionary period — what critics dubbed "the piñata."

Gary Prevost, in the academic volume on the 1990 elections (Rowman & Littlefield), concludes that the FSLN demonstrated a remarkable capacity to "exercise power from below," using its control of social movements and trade union apparatus to condition economic policy under the Chamorro government.^[20]

Historian James Dunkerley, writing immediately after the elections in the New Left Review, formulated the paradox with notable analytical precision: the FSLN's defeat "should not be portrayed as a categorical defeat of the Nicaraguan revolution. The revolution may have ended in many senses, but the FSLN's loss of governmental power must be weighed against the fact that it was incurred through free elections convoked by the Sandinistas themselves, whose vote total massively exceeded that of any other individual party."^[10] This distinction — between defeat of a government and defeat of a political project — is the central analytical key the Nicaraguan paradigm contributes to the comparative framework.

3.4. The Paradoxical Return: From Defeat to Power (1990–2006)

The 1996 and 2001 elections saw the FSLN lose again, with a consistent gap of approximately 46% to 36%.^[3] Yet it remained the largest single party, and the growing legitimacy crisis of successive neoliberal governments eroded the right's support. The FSLN updated its programme, moderated its rhetoric, built trans-ideological alliances — including an agreement with Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo — and adopted a coalition strategy that maximised second-round voting. On 5 November 2006, after three consecutive defeats, Ortega won the presidency with 38% of the vote in a fragmented field, doing so through the electoral competition Reagan had attempted to use as a definitive trap. Oliver North personally travelled to Managua to campaign against him, declaring that his victory would be "the end of Nicaragua." Ortega won anyway — internationally recognised as legitimate.

Van Ommen's LSE analysis synthesises the lesson Ortega drew from his 1990 defeat: that "the image of the FSLN as a force of peace and reconciliation was the necessary condition for recovering power." Between 1990 and 2006 the FSLN systematically transformed its public image, renouncing doctrinal positions — on abortion, property, and the Church — that would have prevented building a winning coalition.^[12]

3.5. The Warning: The FSLN That Returned Was Not the One That Left

The FSLN that returned to power in 2007 was no longer the collective, plural project of 1979. The 1990 scare impressed on Ortega a lesson he interpreted radically differently: not as a validation of the democratic process, but as a demonstration that democratic institutions — free elections, independent press, organised opposition — were instruments adversaries would use to seize power at the most vulnerable moment. His strategy after 2007 was to systematically dismantle each of those instruments.

Americas Quarterly documents the result: "Ortega returned to power in 2007 and never repeated the 'bourgeois folly' of 1990. He immediately consolidated control over every branch of government — a pliant Supreme Court, a manageable Electoral Council, and co-opted, imprisoned, or banned any opposition figure, including Cristiana Chamorro, Violeta's daughter, who has been under house arrest since she attempted to stand in the 2021 presidential election."^[8]

The ultimate paradox: has the revolution that survived the Contra ended up becoming, with different vocabulary and a different generation, something functionally analogous to what it had fought: unchecked power exercised by a family caudillo?

3.6. Four Lessons of the Nicaraguan Paradigm for Cuba and the Region

First — and central: accepting the democratic verdict, far from ending a political project, can be the most effective instrument of its long-term survival. The FSLN of 1990 proved that submitting to the ballot box — even while losing — preserves legitimacy that armed resistance could never recover internationally, and keeps intact the organisational structure that enables return. This is the lesson this study proposes as the central analytical reference for the Cuban transition debate: in an extreme situation, the Cuban Revolution could preserve its political project more effectively by submitting to an internationally guaranteed electoral process than by resisting indefinitely and condemning itself to systemic exhaustion.

Second: external aggression can be counterproductive as a regime-change strategy. The Contra war and the embargo did not destroy the FSLN; they legitimised it as a victim of imperialism and galvanised a revolutionary identity that guaranteed decades of loyal social base. This dynamic replicates exactly what the U.S. embargo does to Cuba: its principal effect is not to democratise the island, but to provide the Cuban State with its primary legitimation argument before its own citizens and the Global South.

Third: institutional guarantees negotiated at the moment of defeat — the FSLN's retention of military control during the Chamorro transition — are the functional equivalent of Spain's Pact of Forgetting: the price that the hegemonic power and the opposition must pay to secure the governing regime's cooperation with the opening process. Without such guarantees, no ruling elite has any rational incentive to initiate a transition that amounts to existential annihilation.

Fourth — the warning: electoral defeat alone does not guarantee democratic consolidation. Ortega's return demonstrated that a revolutionary movement can use the democratic system as a springboard to, once in power, systematically dismantle it. This is a legitimate fear — the Nicaraguan precedent validates it empirically — but it does not constitute a sufficient argument for rejecting the opening process: the risk of transition, however high, is preferable to the certainty of stagnation produced by indefinite siege.

IV. The Architecture of the Spanish Transition: Hegemonic Pragmatism and Entrenched Interests

4.1. U.S. Strategic Imperatives: From Franco to Juan Carlos

The conventional narrative frequently postulates that the United States was a champion of Iberian democracy. A rigorous examination of diplomatic archives reveals a far more pragmatic approach. During the Nixon and Ford administrations, the principal U.S. concern in Spain was the preservation of military interests — specifically the retention of joint military bases established under the 1953 Hispanic-American Agreement.

State Department records, compiled in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E-15, show that Ambassador Wells Stabler^[6] — serving in Madrid from 1975 to 1978 — maintained daily communication with Kissinger that, according to Jorge Urdánoz's analysis in La Transición según los espías (Akal, 2024), demythologises several founding narratives of Spanish democracy.^[7]

Stabler wrote in February 1975 that it would be "significantly easier to reach agreement on the renewal of the military bases if Franco remained in power."^[8] This communication exposes Washington's strategic calculus: Spanish democracy was not a moral imperative, but a potential vector of instability threatening the Cold War balance on NATO's southern flank. The real fear was a repeat of the Portuguese scenario after the 1974 Carnation Revolution.^[9]

Kissinger's memorandum for President Ford ahead of King Juan Carlos's June 1976 state visit argues that demonstrating full support for the King was "the best hope for democratic evolution with stability that will protect our interests in Spain."^[9] Washington recognised that the monarchy, restored by Franco, could only survive if it led a controlled, top-down democratisation.

4.2. The Pact of Forgetting and the 1977 Amnesty Law

The cornerstone of the Spanish transition was the deliberate, legally binding decision to ignore past atrocities to secure a peaceful future. This socio-political consensus — the Pact of Forgetting — was formally codified in the Amnesty Law of 15 October 1977 (Law 46/1977). While celebrated as a mechanism for releasing political prisoners, it simultaneously functioned as a legal shield protecting perpetrators of serious human rights violations by the Francoist state apparatus.

Paloma Aguilar Fernández demonstrates that the Pact "became something inherent to the social and political practices of the era" thanks to the traumatic memory of the Civil War.^[4] One of Spanish society's primary objectives was that "'never again' would a confrontation like the Civil War repeat itself. This desire, almost obsessive, explains in large measure the policy of consensus and reconciliation that governed the process."^[4]

By legally equating the democratic opposition's subversive acts with the dictatorial state's systematic violence, the Amnesty Law engineered a foundational impunity that protected the military, police, and Tribunal de Orden Público judges from any future transitional justice mechanism. The direct consequence: the families and corporate conglomerates that had amassed fortunes through proximity to the Franco regime faced no redistribution or confiscation. The economic elite rebranded itself, frictionlessly, as modern European capitalists.

4.3. The Domestication of Radicalism: The PCE and the Price of Legality

The transition's success would have been impossible without the Spanish Communist Party's (PCE) pragmatic capitulation. Under Santiago Carrillo, the PCE transformed from orthodox Marxism-Leninism to "Eurocommunism," accepting liberal democratic rules and the capitalist market economy. Urdánoz's analysis of Stabler's cables reveals that the PCE's legalisation on 9 April 1977 — the "Red Easter Saturday" — had fundamentally economic, not moral, motivations:^[7] the Suárez government needed the PCE's cooperation to impose a macroeconomic stabilisation plan, which the party's control of the Workers' Commissions (CCOO) could either enable or block. In exchange for legality, Carrillo forced the PCE to abandon its historical republicanism and accept the Bourbon monarchy — doing so even ahead of the Socialists — and to renounce all demands for restitution of property confiscated under Francoism. The price of legitimacy was the formal protection of the Francoist economic oligarchy.

V. Comparative Table: Four Models of Transition

Element	Spain (Negotiated Rupture)	Nicaragua (Dignified Electoral Defeat)	Cuba (Revolutionary Rupture)	Mexico (Institutionalised Revolution)
Transition Type (Huntington)	Transplacement: elite-opposition negotiation led from above.	Electoral replacement: defeat at the ballot box accepted with dignity; democratic return to power in 2006.	No transition: total revolutionary rupture, no negotiated opening.	Controlled transformation: change from within the regime, no rupture.
Treatment of Outgoing Elites	Full legal amnesty; complete preservation of wealth; integration into the new democratic state.	FSLN retained effective military control during the Chamorro transition as price of cooperation; no purges guaranteed.	Total expropriation; political prosecution; mass exile.	Absorption into single-party apparatus; elite rotation without economic purges.
Property Rights	Uninterrupted continuity of assets acquired under the dictatorship.	Partial redistribution during revolutionary period; "the piñata" in 1990 transition. Reformed property was not returned.	Sweeping nationalisation; radical land reform; elimination of large-scale private property.	State control of strategic resources (oil); parallel promotion of a protected national bourgeoisie.
Historical Memory	Institutionalised amnesia (Pact of Forgetting); deliberate renunciation of retributive justice.	Post-1990 reconciliation narrative; FSLN accepts defeat as cost of peace. No formal impunity, but no prosecution either.	Institutionalisation of revolutionary memory; glorification of armed struggle as source of legitimacy.	Rhetorical mythologisation of the 1910 Revolution to legitimise the governing party, increasingly remote from the original ideology.
U.S. Posture	Pragmatic support conditional on preserving military bases and anti-communist stability.	Contra funding (up to $400M); 1985 embargo; $9M to UNO in 1990 elections. Normalisation after Sandinista defeat.	Total embargo since 1962; terrorism list (1982, 2021, 2025); covert operations; legislative warfare (Helms-Burton).	Historic pragmatic accommodation; economic integration via NAFTA (1994); democratic normalisation in 2000 without direct U.S. pressure.
Long-Term Outcome	Consolidated democracy, integrated into EU and NATO. Tensions over unresolved historical memory (Democratic Memory Law, 2022).	FSLN electoral return in 2006. Authoritarian regression since 2007–2012. Warning: electoral victory can become instrument of power concentration.	Single-party socialist state. Structural economic stagnation. Growing dependence on Russia and China. No transition in sight under current external pressure framework.	Functional multiparty democracy since 2000. Consolidated peaceful alternation. Challenges: systemic corruption and organised crime.
Central Lesson for Cuba	Legal amnesia enables transition but not justice. Elites exit unscathed if offered a dignified way out.	Accepting electoral defeat with dignity is the most effective political survival strategy under hegemonic aggression.	Not applicable. Cuba is the case to be explained, not the model to follow.	Institutionalising the revolutionary project preserves its essence; economic negotiation with the hegemon neutralises its hostility.

VI. The 23-F Crisis and the Conditional Nature of Hegemonic Support

The fragile architecture of the Spanish transition was subjected to its most violent test on 23 February 1981, when Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero, commanding armed Civil Guards, stormed the Congress of Deputies in a televised coup attempt. Government documents declassified on 25 February 2026 — on the 45th anniversary — have illuminated the dark recesses of the Spanish "deep state" and the precarious, conditional nature of international diplomatic support.

6.1. The Haig Slip and Reagan's Pragmatism

The declassified documents reveal the diplomatic friction between the young Spanish democracy and the newly inaugurated Reagan administration. On the evening of 23 February, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig — at 18:00 U.S. time, equivalent to midnight in Madrid, according to Spanish Foreign Ministry archives — declared to journalists that the coup was "an internal affair" of Spain.^[10]

Haig's declaration was interpreted in Spain as tacit approval of, or at least studied indifference to, the overthrow of the legitimate democratic government. Historian Julio Ponce Alberca's analysis in "Anatomy of an 'Internal Affair': The U.S. Government's Attitude toward 23-F" concludes that the U.S. Embassy cables do not point to direct Reagan administration complicity, but do confirm "the underlying reflex of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War: an inherent preference for anti-communist military authoritarianism over the unpredictable disorder of a democratic parliament with left-wing influence."^[11]

The coup failed, fundamentally because of King Juan Carlos I's televised address at 1:14 a.m., in which he ordered the military to stand down: "No coup attempt can use the King as a shield — it is against the King." At 10:35 a.m. on 24 February, President Reagan telephoned the monarch and, according to declassified cable USICA 18821, expressed profound relief and praised his "vigorous and courageous determination."^[10] Haig wrote to Foreign Minister José Pedro Pérez-Llorca on 26 February to congratulate him on the "successful resolution of the situation in the Cortes." Reagan sent a formal letter to Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo on 28 February expressing confidence in Spanish democratic leadership. King Juan Carlos responded on 10 March: "It is heartening for the Spanish people to know that in their efforts they have at their side the great American nation."^[10]

6.2. The Shadows of the Deep State: CESID Involvement

The 2026 declassifications also pierced the veil of impunity around the Spanish intelligence apparatus. According to the internal CESID report (the predecessor to today's CNI), at least six active members of the Special Missions Operational Group (AOME) had prior knowledge of the coup and actively participated in its logistical support.^[12]

The CESID report details that one captain provided "equipment, radio transmitters, and vehicles" for the rebel military columns, and records pre-23-F meetings between Commander Cortina and both the U.S. Ambassador and the Vatican's Apostolic Nuncio in Spain — though the report does not establish that these meetings were directly linked to the conspiracy. Of the six named, only Captain Gómez Iglesias was convicted, receiving a six-year sentence.^[12]

VII. The Cuban Rupture Model: Radicalisation and the Tricontinental Axis

7.1. The Spirit of Bandung and the Algerian War

To understand why the Spanish consensus model is inapplicable to contemporary Cuba, it is necessary to analyse the divergent geopolitical trajectory of the Cuban Revolution. Unlike the Spanish transition — which desperately sought NATO and EEC integration — Cuba's revolutionary leadership aligned rapidly after 1959 with the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements of the Global South. The Cuban Revolution was deeply influenced by the post-colonial zeitgeist embodied in the 1955 Bandung Conference, whose "Spirit," articulated by leaders such as Indonesia's Sukarno, emphasised Afro-Asian solidarity against imperialism. By the early 1960s, Algeria and Cuba had emerged as the global archetypes of armed revolution.

By exporting armed militancy and positioning itself as the moral leader of the post-colonial world, the Cuban State structurally alienated itself from any possibility of peaceful accommodation with the United States — unlike the pragmatism shown by post-Francoist Spain. The Western left's romance with the Cuban model deepened Cold War anxieties in Washington, confirming Cuba not as a state in reformist transition, but as an example to be contained or eradicated.

7.2. The Eradication of Entrenched Interests

Driven by its Marxist and anti-colonial framework, the Cuban revolutionary government systematically eradicated the pre-1959 economic and political elites. Unlike Spain, where the Francoist oligarchy retained its wealth, land, and corporate dominance, the Cuban State carried out mass agrarian reforms, nationalised domestic and foreign industries — predominantly U.S.-owned, estimated at $1.8 billion in 1959 dollars^[13] — and confiscated the private property of the bourgeoisie as it fled en masse to Miami.

This total dispossession represents the fundamental structural divergence between the two models. In Spain, the cost of democratisation to the outgoing elite was zero: they lost absolute dictatorial control over the government, but retained their capital, freedom, and social status intact. In Cuba, the pre-revolutionary elite lost everything absolutely, generating a visceral and transgenerational demand for retributive justice and property restitution that defines and dominates Cuban diaspora politics to this day.

VIII. The Insurmountable Barrier: The Helms-Burton Act and the Impossibility of Consensus

The possibility of applying a Spanish-style "negotiated transition" to Cuba is systematically frustrated by the legal, political, and economic realities imposed by the Cuban exile community and U.S. hegemonic legislation. The Helms-Burton Act — formally the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 — was designed to strengthen the embargo and pressure Cuba to abandon its government. Specifically, its Title III creates a private right of action allowing U.S. nationals to sue in federal courts any person who "traffics" in property confiscated by the Cuban government after 1 January 1959.^[13]

From a comparative perspective, the Helms-Burton Act is the exact legal inverse of Spain's 1977 Amnesty Law. While Spain legislated compulsory amnesia to protect the governing elite, the United States legislated compulsory punitive memory to destroy the Cuban state and deter foreign investment. Title III remained suspended from 1996 until May 2019, when the Trump administration activated it fully, unleashing an avalanche of international litigation.^[13]

Cuba Study Group analyst Phil Peters noted with precision that Helms-Burton "is not really about satisfying property claims. The law's authors sought to damage Cuba's economy at a moment when it was 'vulnerable to international economic pressure,' making foreign investment prohibitively risky."^[14]

This legal structure creates an insurmountable zero-sum game. If Cuba's current political, military, and economic elite recognises that a transition to democracy will inevitably result in their total economic ruin, legal prosecution, and displacement by returning exiles, they have no rational incentive to initiate or permit a negotiated transition. The cost of ceding power is equivalent to existential annihilation.

IX. Conclusion: Lessons from Hegemony, Asphyxiation, and Numantine Resistance

The comparative analysis of regime trajectories in Mexico, Nicaragua, Spain, and Cuba demonstrates unequivocally that the mechanics of democratic transitions are inextricably bound to the management of entrenched economic interests and to the dictates of U.S. foreign policy.

The Mexican model demonstrated that the United States is willing to accommodate prolonged authoritarian regimes — Vargas Llosa's "perfect dictatorship" — so long as they guarantee capitalist integration and border security. The 2000 transition succeeded because the outgoing elites faced no threat of expropriation.

The Nicaraguan case proved that submitting to democratic rules — even losing — is the most effective long-term survival strategy for a revolutionary movement. The FSLN's dignified defeat in 1990, and its structural preservation of organisational capacity and institutional guarantees during the Chamorro transition, enabled its electoral return in 2006. This is the central lesson this study proposes as an analytical reference for Cuba: in an extreme situation, the Cuban Revolution could preserve its political project more effectively by submitting to an internationally guaranteed electoral process than by resisting indefinitely and condemning itself to systemic exhaustion.

The revelation of the deep state's machinations during the 23-F crisis destroys the myth of Spain's preordained peaceful evolution. As Paloma Aguilar Fernández's historiography^[4] and the Stabler cables analysed by Urdánoz^[7] demonstrate, the Spanish transition succeeded through a precarious consensus that depended on the communist left's ideological surrender and the Francoist oligarchy's blanket legal protection. The 23-F was a stark reminder that the process could be reversed at any moment.

This paradigmatic model of "negotiated amnesia" is not transferable to the Cuban theatre. The Helms-Burton Act — the legal inverse of Spain's Amnesty Law — and the maximalist restitution demands of the exile community create a zero-sum environment where compromise is equivalent to unconditional surrender. As O'Donnell and Schmitter's comparative analysis of transitions warns, authoritarian regimes without negotiated exit routes will tend to resist democratisation or perpetuate themselves indefinitely.^[1]

Finally, the strategy of total asphyxiation imposed on the Cuban regime has the most perverse possible effect: cornered and without incentives to share power, the Cuban leadership has historically demonstrated a remarkable capacity for resistance.

EPILOGUE. 1. The Rubio Enigma: A Negotiation Between Cubans — and its Conditions for Success

As this article is writing, Cuban geopolitics is traversing a moment of exceptional fluidity. Since February 2026, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — son of Cuban emigrants, born in Miami, and for decades one of the most implacable anti-Castro hawks in the U.S. Senate — has, according to reports by Axios and the Miami Herald partially corroborated by President Trump, been conducting secret conversations with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Raúl Castro and son of the late General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, who for years controlled the military-business conglomerate GAESA.^[15]

This negotiating configuration contains a first-order historical paradox. Formally, it is a negotiation between the U.S. government and the Cuban regime. Substantively, however, it is essentially a negotiation between Cubans: a son of the anti-Castro exile representing Washington's hegemonic interests, and a grandson of the military-revolutionary leadership. Both interlocutors share, structurally, more in common — a transactional, business-oriented pragmatism, distant from ideological dogma — than their respective domestic audiences would be willing to acknowledge. A senior Trump administration official described these conversations to Axios as "surprisingly friendly, with no political diatribes about the past."^[15]

Rubio's structural ambivalence is, however, as profound as his centrality. Drop Site News reports — partially corroborated by the New York Times — suggest that Rubio himself may be feigning negotiations before Trump so that, upon their failure, regime change appears the only available option.^[16] If Trump were to reach a real agreement with Cuba, Rubio would face the hardest of choices: betray the cause that defines his public identity, or resign as Secretary of State. This tension makes Rubio simultaneously the most suitable agent for an agreement — due to his standing with the Cuban exile community — and one of its most dangerous potential saboteurs.

2. The Prior Structural Problem: Negotiating with a Party That Does Not Keep Its Word

Before examining the Rhodes precedent and the conditions for a possible agreement, comparative analysis compels us to raise a question that conventional diplomatic logic tends to evade: Is it possible to negotiate sustainable agreements with a hegemonic power whose foreign policy changes radically every four to eight years, and whose current leader has systematically demonstrated that prior international commitments do not bind him? This question is neither rhetorical nor ideological. It is a question of institutional design with direct consequences for the rationality of any negotiating process.

The case of Cuba's designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism illustrates the problem with a clarity no academic analysis could surpass. Cuba was first added to the list in 1982 under the Reagan administration. Obama removed it in May 2015 after an exhaustive intelligence review concluded Cuba was not sponsoring terrorism. Twelve days before leaving office — on 12 January 2021 — Trump restored it, citing primarily Cuba's refusal to extradite ELN negotiators who were on the island as participants in the Colombian peace negotiations, endorsed by Colombia's own government and Norway. That same argument was not applied to Norway. Biden removed it again on 14 January 2025, as part of a Vatican-mediated agreement for the release of 553 political prisoners. Cuba began releasing detainees.^[24] Trump restored it on 20 January 2025, his first day in office. The Cuban prisoners who had been released were left in legal limbo. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez described the designation as "a tool of political coercion," not a genuine anti-terrorism response.^[25]

This cycle — removed by Obama in 2015, restored by Trump in 2021, removed by Biden in 2025, restored by Trump in 2025 — is not a diplomatic anecdote. It is a structural description of the condition of negotiating with the United States on matters involving Cuba: any concession the Cuban Revolution makes in exchange for sanctions relief can be reversed within 24 hours, while Cuban concessions — prisoner releases, institutional reforms, economic opening — are barely reversible without devastating domestic political cost. This asymmetry of irreversibility means that any rational Cuban negotiator must always factor in the possibility of "making real concessions in exchange for promises tha might be ignored." This structural asymmetry is the deepest obstacle to any sustainable agreement, and no serious analysis can ignore it.

3. The Risk Profile: Four Episodes That Define a Doctrine

The reversal of the Cuba-Obama agreements is not the only episode that configures the risk profile of negotiating with the current U.S. administration. Four additional episodes, of different natures but analytically convergent consequences, allow us to trace the contours of a doctrine with profound implications for Latin American democracy.

First: the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021. For comparative transition analysis, this episode — in which the outgoing president "mobilised" his supporters to prevent certification of the electoral result — carries a precise significance beyond U.S. domestic political analysis: it demonstrates that the leader with whom one negotiates has attempted, in his own country, the kind of institutional conduct Washington recriminates in Latin American adversaries. The distinction between "democracy" and "autocracy" as geopolitically functional categories erodes when the former is practised conditionally even within the hegemon itself. For a negotiator from Havana, Managua, or Caracas, 6 January is not a domestic scandal: it is relevant evidence about the counterpart's disposition toward democratic procedures when their outcome is unfavourable.

Second: the forced extradition operation against Nicolás Maduro, for whom the Trump administration offered a millions reward and against whom the Justice Department sustained narco-trafficking charges. The practice of placing a bounty on a sitting Latin American head of state and actively facilitating his extrajudicial "capture," as several international law analysts described it, places any Latin American government in the position that Washington's negotiating stance does not distinguish between conventional diplomatic pressure and the direct elimination of the adversary. The guarantee of non-extradition that this analysis identifies as a minimum condition for any Cuban transition process is structurally implausible in that context.

Third: the targeted killing of General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, executed without a declaration of war and without prior consultation with allies. This episode is relevant to the Latin American analysis not for its geographical context but for what it reveals about the threshold of unilateral action: the Trump administration demonstrated willingness to execute a high-impact strategic operation of global consequence with the same level of prior consultation as a breakfast decision. For a regime negotiating under the pressure of non-prosecution guarantees, the question is not whether the United States would honour a negotiated transition agreement, but whether the president across the table has the institutional disposition to honour any agreement that does not produce an immediate, visible transactional gain.

Fourth: the accumulation of the three preceding episodes as a pattern, not a set of isolated incidents. The conclusion that imposes itself for the analysis of Cuba-U.S. negotiating possibilities is the following: the problem is not only that Trump reverses Obama's agreements — that is "conventional political alternation". The problem is that the pattern of conduct demonstrated by the Trump administration, taken as a whole, makes trust as a precondition for politics in freedom a high existential-risk bet for any regime that must make irreversible concessions before it can verify the counterpart's compliance. As William LeoGrande notes, the cycle of Cuba terrorism-list designations and de-designations has demonstrated that "there is no longer any legitimate rationale whatsoever for Cuba being on that list"^[26] — its use is fundamentally electoral-domestic, not anti-terrorist. The list's permanence or removal depends not on facts on the ground, but on electoral calculations in South Florida.

4. The Rhodes Precedent: Lessons from the Obama Opening (2014)

To properly calibrate the possibilities of the current Rubio-Castro diplomatic process, it is essential to analyse the only successful precedent of secret negotiation between the United States and the Cuban Revolution: the process conducted between 2013 and 2014 by Ben Rhodes, then Deputy National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama, whose result was the historic 17 December 2014 announcement restoring diplomatic relations after more than fifty years of rupture.

Ben Rhodes — a writer turned political strategist, without conventional military or diplomatic training, and precisely therefore capable of seeing the problem with fresh eyes — recounts in his memoir The World as It Is (2018) the anatomy of a negotiation that lasted more than a year and was held in Trinidad and Tobago, Cancún, Canada, and Cuba itself. Rhodes held approximately twenty meetings with his counterpart, Alejandro Castro Espín — Raúl Castro's son and an influential figure in the Cuban intelligence apparatus — with the final meeting lasting several hours and serving as the script for the subsequent telephone call between Obama and Raúl Castro that sealed the agreement on 17 December 2014.^[22]

The structural parallel with the current Rubio-Castro process is immediate: a senior U.S. official with deep personal ties to the Cuban file negotiates secretly with a Castro family member representing the most pragmatic dimension of the revolutionary apparatus. The differences, however, are equally revealing. National Security Advisor Susan Rice instructed Rhodes to "go big" from the outset — "the big bang" — rather than limit the talks to a spy exchange that had been the starting point.^[23] The result was a comprehensive package: the Cuban Revolution released USAID contractor Alan Gross and more than fifty political prisoners; in exchange, the United States released the three remaining members of the "Cuban Five," partially suspended the embargo, and reopened embassies in Havana and Washington.

The three lessons of the Rhodes precedent are directly applicable to the current process. First: absolute confidentiality is a condition of possibility; no Cuba-U.S. agreement can survive premature public exposure, because both domestic audiences have incentives to destroy it the moment it surfaces. Second: the process requires a Cuban interlocutor with real, committed, and recognised authority; Alejandro Castro had that authority. Third, and most importantly: the 2014 agreement was possible because neither side required the other to stop being what it was. Obama did not demand multiparty elections as a precondition; the Cuban Revolution did not demand full embargo lifting before negotiating. It was dignified coexistence, not imposed transformation of the other. The Trump government dismantled that agreement between 2017 and 2019 — reactivating Helms-Burton Title III, among other measures — demonstrating that its fragility lay not in its design but in the absence of mechanisms to shield it from U.S. political alternation. Any new agreement must institutionalise irreversibility guarantees.^[22]

5. Conditions for a Mutually Satisfactory Agreement: Seven Negotiating Keys

Taking as analytical guide the structural lesson central to this study — that successful democratic transitions require the management of entrenched economic interests before the imposition of ideological virtue — it is possible to identify the minimum conditions that would need to be met for the current diplomatic process to achieve a negotiated outcome that is fifty percent satisfactory to both parties.

Key	Concession Required from U.S. / Rubio	Concession Required from Cuba / "El Cangrejo"
1. Decouple restitution from transition	Suspend Helms-Burton Title III enforcement during an 18-24 month pilot period as a confidence-building measure. Without this, Cuba has no incentive to negotiate.	Accept a negotiated economic compensation mechanism for U.S. claimants, distinct from physical property restitution. Model: Vietnamese post-normalisation compensation (1995).
2. Gradual month-by-month model	Adopt the incremental sanctions-relief mechanism proposed at the CARICOM summit: phased easing linked to verifiable commitments, without requiring immediate democratisation or regime dissolution as a precondition.	Commit to verifiable, sequenced reforms: release of political prisoners (phase 1), expansion of the private sector (phase 2), municipal electoral opening (phase 3). Not immediate full democratisation, but a credible roadmap.
3. Non-persecution guarantees	Offer explicit guarantees of non-extradition and non-prosecution to members of the Cuban military and political elite who cooperate with the transition. Without this existential insurance — the clearest lesson of the Spanish model — no elite will initiate an exit process.	The military-business elite (GAESA) must accept progressively disclosing its ownership structure and allowing private and foreign capital participation in its conglomerates — as a controlled opening, not a liquidation.
4. Managing the exile community as actor, not only audience	Washington must actively manage the expectations of the Miami exile community. No agreement will survive Congressional pressure if hard-line Cuban-American legislators sabotage it on Capitol Hill. Rubio is the only actor capable of neutralising that pressure — which makes his ambivalence the central risk of the process.	The Cuban delegation must accept the participation of moderate diaspora representatives — not only the hard-line exile — in the design of transition institutions. Excluding them perpetuates the cycle of delegitimisation.
5. Lifting the energy blockade as a first gesture	The fuel and electricity crisis Cuba is experiencing in 2026 is a real humanitarian catastrophe. Conditioning the lifting of the energy siege on political reforms is ethically untenable and tactically counterproductive: it radicalises the population and reinforces the regime's victimist narrative.	Cuba must allow independent verification — by UN or OAS agencies — that the relieved fuel is not diverted to military use or internal repression, a minimum credibility condition before the U.S. Congress.
6. Institutionalise multilateral mediation	Formalise the CARICOM channel and Mexico's mediation (Claudia Sheinbaum has confirmed her role as intermediary) as a multilateral framework that provides political cover to both parties and prevents the process from appearing as a direct bilateral capitulation, which would destroy it politically in both countries.	Cuba must elevate the formal level of its interlocutors: continuing to negotiate through "El Cangrejo" without official recognition creates a credibility asymmetry that can be used to delegitimise any agreement reached.
7. Finlandisation, not satellitisation	The U.S. cannot demand that Cuba simultaneously break with Russia and China as a precondition. The objective must be gradual finlandisation: a Cuba that reduces its dependence on Moscow and Beijing without being absorbed into Washington's orbit.	Cuba must commit to not permitting new Russian or Chinese military installations on its territory, and to notifying the U.S. of existing defence agreements — a visible counterpart of normalisation.

6. The Structural Lesson: What Comparative History Says

The greatest obstacle is not ideological: it is structural. As this study's comparative analysis demonstrates, the Spanish transition did not succeed because actors were virtuous, but because the entrenched interests of the elite were protected before the opening process began. The lesson for Cuba in 2026 is identical: as long as Helms-Burton Title III remains active and demands for total restitution remain the official position of the exile community, Cuba's leadership has no rational incentive whatsoever to initiate a transition that amounts, in their existential logic, to annihilation.

The historical opportunity of this moment lies precisely in the paradox noted at the outset: that the U.S. interlocutor is a Cuban by origin, and that the Cuban interlocutor is the representative of the most pragmatic, least ideological leadership in the history of the revolution — creating, for the first time, a conversation "surprisingly friendly, with no diatribes about the past." This negotiating psychology is exactly the spirit of Spain's Pact of Forgetting transposed to Caribbean conditions. If this dynamic is allowed to inform the legal and institutional design of the process — by suspending restitution threats, offering non-prosecution guarantees, and establishing a gradual, verifiable roadmap — the window of opportunity that exists today could close definitively if the hard line on both sides, the bunker in Havana and the hawks in Miami, imposes its logic of entrenched resistance. Fear of what comes after kills negotiations before they begin. Eliminating it — through concrete guarantees, not rhetoric — is the only real lever that exists.

Notes and References

Footnotes

[1] O'Donnell, G., Schmitter, P. C. & Whitehead, L. (eds.) (1986). Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

[2] Huntington, S. P. (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN: 978-0806125169.

[3] Vargas Llosa, M. (30 August 1990). Intervention at "Encuentro Vuelta: La experiencia de la libertad." Mexico City: Televisa. Reviewed in Proceso, No. 723, 10 September 1990. https://www.proceso.com.mx/cultura/2025/4/13/el-dia-que-vargas-llosa-acuno-la-frase-la-dictadura-perfecta-hizo-enojar-octavio-paz-video-349314.html

[4] Aguilar Fernández, P. (1996). Memoria y olvido de la Guerra Civil española. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. ISBN: 978-8420694689. Also: Aguilar Fernández, P. (2008). Políticas de la memoria y memorias de la política. Madrid: Alianza. ISBN: 978-8420669762. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309717534_Memoria_y_olvido_de_la_Guerra_Civil_espanola

[5] Linz, J. J. (1970). "An Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Spain." In Allardt, E. & Rokkan, S. (eds.), Mass Politics. New York: Free Press. Also: Linz, J. J. & Stepan, A. (1996). Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

[6] Stabler, W. (1987). "The View from the U.S. Embassy." In Binnendijk, H. (ed.), Authoritarian Regimes in Transition. Washington: Department of State. Stabler served as U.S. Ambassador to Spain March 1975 – May 1978. Obituary: The Washington Post, 19 November 2009. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/18/AR2009111803896.html

[7] Urdánoz, J. (2024). La Transición según los espías. Madrid: Akal. Analysis of thousands of diplomatic cables sent by Stabler to Kissinger between 1976 and 1978. https://ctxt.es/es/20240601/Politica/46753/wells-stabler-pce-jorge-urdanoz-transicion-espias.htm

[8] Navarro, V. (2007). "How the U.S. Schemed Against Spain's Transition." Based on: Sartorius, N. & Sabio, A. (2007). El final de la dictadura. Madrid: Temas de Hoy. https://www.vnavarro.org/?p=65&lang=en

[9] Pedaliu, E. (2016). "The Nixon and Ford Administrations and the Future of Post-Franco Spain (1970-6)." The International History Review, 38(5). DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2016.1146912. Primary source: U.S. National Archives, RG 59, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve15p2/ch5

[10] Government of Spain (25 February 2026). Declassified 23-F documents. Ministries of Defence, Interior and Foreign Affairs. Includes: Diplomatic cable USICA 18821; Expedient AGMAE R39017/Exp.4; Reagan letter to Calvo-Sotelo (28 Feb. 1981); Juan Carlos I reply (10 Mar. 1981). https://www.france24.com/es/europa/20260225-disparar-a-matar-lo-que-revelan-los-archivos-desclasificados-sobre-el-intento-golpista-de-1981-en-espa%C3%B1a

[11] Ponce Alberca, J. (2011). "Anatomy of an 'Internal Affair': The U.S. Government's Attitude toward 23-F." Revista Ayer, Marcial Pons Historia. https://www.revistasmarcialpons.es/revistaayer/article/download/lopez-anatomia-de-un-asunto-interno/2072/5090

[12] Government of Spain (2026). CESID-AOME Internal Report on the 23-F. In: Declassified 23-F Documents, 25 February 2026. https://www.elespanol.com/espana/20260225/cesid-detecto-participacion-activa-varios-mandos-golpe-gestiones-encubrirlo/1003744145046_0.html

[13] Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 (Helms-Burton Act). Pub. L. 104-114, 110 Stat. 785. Analysis: Cornelio Hitchmann et al. (2024). "The Activation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act." International Journal of Cuban Studies, 17(1). DOI: 10.13169/intejcubastud.17.1.0003. https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/intejcubastud.17.1.0003

[14] Peters, P. (2019). "Analysis: Activating Title III of Helms-Burton." Cuba Study Group. http://cubastudygroup.org/csg_resources/analysis-activating-title-iii-of-helms-burton/

[15] Axios (18 February 2026). "Rubio's secret squeeze on Raúl Castro's Cuba." / Miami Herald (26 February 2026). "Rubio team met with grandson of Raúl Castro at CARICOM summit in St. Kitts." / Trump declaration (27 February 2026): "Secretary Rubio is in conversations with the regime at the highest level." https://www.axios.com/2026/02/18/marco-rubio-cuba-secret-talks

[16] Drop Site News (February 2026). "Rubio is deceiving Trump about Cuba talks." Partially corroborated by: The New York Times (February 2026). Coverage: Belly of the Beast Cuba. https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/noticias/segun-informes-rubio-engana-a-trump-sobre-las-conversaciones-con-cuba

[17] OnCuba News (26 February 2026). "Rubio team met with Raúl Castro's grandson in St. Kitts and Nevis." Includes GAESA profile and Rodríguez Castro background. https://oncubanews.com/cuba-ee-uu/otro-angulo-de-caricom-revelan-que-el-equipo-de-marco-rubio-se-reunio-con-el-nieto-de-raul-castro-en-san-cristobal-y-nieves/

[18] OnCuba News (23 February 2026). "Cuban government reaffirms decision to resist U.S. pressure but remains open to 'respectful' dialogue." Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez before the UN Human Rights Council. https://oncubanews.com/articulos-revista/gobierno-cubano-reafirma-decision-de-resistir-presion-de-eeuu-pero-se-mantiene-abierto-al-dialogo-respetuoso/

[19] LASA Commission (1984). "Electoral Democracy in Nicaragua." Also: Pallmeyer, J. (2012). "UNO Presidential Candidate Violeta Chamorro: A Surprising Defeat?" Macalester College, Latin American Studies. https://www.macalester.edu/latin-american-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/579/2012/09/LAPResearchPaper-Pallmeyer-1.pdf

[20] LeoGrande, W. M. (1996). "Making the Economy Scream: US Economic Sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua." Third World Quarterly, 17(2), 329-348. Also: Prevost, G. (1994). "The FSLN as Ruling Party." In Vanden, H. E. & Prevost, G. (eds.), Democracy and Socialism in Sandinista Nicaragua. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

[21] Dunkerley, J. (1990). "Elections in Nicaragua." New Left Review, I/182 (July-August 1990). Carter Center records on mediation role.

[22] Rhodes, B. (2018). The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. New York: Random House. ISBN: 978-0525509370. On Cuba: approximately 20 secret meetings with Alejandro Castro, June 2013 – December 2014. https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/a-backstage-pass-to-the-historic-us-cuba-thaw/

[23] Rhodes, B. (2018), op. cit., Cuba chapters. Susan Rice's "go big" instruction: "the big bang." Source: Americas Quarterly (13 June 2018). https://www.fp4america.org/ben-rhodes/

[24] Cuba SST designation timeline. (1) Obama removes: May 2015. (2) Trump restores: 12 January 2021, eight days before leaving office (Sec. Pompeo). (3) Biden removes: 14 January 2025, Vatican-mediated deal; Cuba releases 553 prisoners. (4) Trump restores: 20 January 2025, Day 1 of second term. Source: Baker McKenzie, Global Sanctions Blog (22 January 2025). https://sanctionsnews.bakermckenzie.com/cubas-designation-as-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism-and-the-cuba-restricted-list-briefly-rescinded-by-outgoing-president-biden-then-reinstated-by-incoming-president-trump/

[25] Rodríguez Parrilla, B. (Cuban Foreign Minister, 2025). Statement cited in CBS Miami (21 January 2025): "a tool of political coercion." WOLA: "Cuba's 2021 designation as a terrorism sponsor was not evidence-based and was not useful for democratisation goals." Source: wola.org (29 January 2025). https://www.wola.org/2025/01/wola-welcomes-removal-of-cuba-from-terror-sponsor-list-urges-release-of-all-detained/

[26] LeoGrande, W. M. (December 2023). 'Biden Has No Courage on Cuba.' Responsible Statecraft / Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Quote: 'no longer any legitimate rationale whatsoever for Cuba being designated a state sponsor of terrorism.' Also: LeoGrande, W. M. & Kornbluh, P. (2014). Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Chapel Hill: UNC Press. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/biden-cuba-trump/

Bibliography

Primary Sources — Declassified Archives and Documents

[A1] U.S. National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. Stabler cables to Kissinger (1975–1978). https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve15p2/ch5

[A2] Government of Spain (2026). Declassified 23-F Documents [Ministries of Defence, Interior and Foreign Affairs, released 25 February 2026]. Includes: Cable USICA 18821; Expedient AGMAE R39017/Exp.4; CESID-AOME Report. https://www.france24.com/es/europa/20260225-disparar-a-matar-lo-que-revelan-los-archivos-desclasificados-sobre-el-intento-golpista-de-1981-en-espa%C3%B1a

[A3] Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996. Pub. L. 104-114. https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/wha/cuba/helms-burton-act.html

[A4] Spanish Amnesty Law of 15 October 1977 (Law 46/1977). BOE no. 248, pp. 22765-22766. https://www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-1977-24937

Books and Monographs

[B1] Aguilar Fernández, P. (1996). Memoria y olvido de la Guerra Civil española. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. ISBN: 978-8420694689. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309717534_Memoria_y_olvido_de_la_Guerra_Civil_espanola

[B2] Aguilar Fernández, P. (2008). Políticas de la memoria y memorias de la política. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

[B3] Huntington, S. P. (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. https://archive.org/details/thirdwavedemocra0000hunt

[B4] Linz, J. J. & Stepan, A. (1996). Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

[B5] LeoGrande, W. M. & Kornbluh, P. (2014). Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

[B6] O'Donnell, G., Schmitter, P. C. & Whitehead, L. (eds.) (1986). Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

[B7] Rhodes, B. (2018). The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. New York: Random House. ISBN: 978-0525509370.

[B8] Sartorius, N. & Sabio, A. (2007). El final de la dictadura. Madrid: Temas de Hoy.

[B9] Urdánoz, J. (2024). La Transición según los espías. Madrid: Akal. https://ctxt.es/es/20240601/Politica/46753/wells-stabler-pce-jorge-urdanoz-transicion-espias.htm

Academic Articles

[C1] Cornelio Hitchmann, Barrera Rodríguez & Domínguez López (2024). "The Activation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act." International Journal of Cuban Studies, 17(1). DOI: 10.13169/intejcubastud.17.1.0003. https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/intejcubastud.17.1.0003

[C2] Dunkerley, J. (1990). "Elections in Nicaragua." New Left Review, I/182.

[C3] LeoGrande, W. M. (1996). "Making the Economy Scream: US Economic Sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua." Third World Quarterly, 17(2). DOI: 10.1080/01436599615537.

[C4] Pedaliu, E. (2016). "The Nixon and Ford Administrations and the Future of Post-Franco Spain." The International History Review, 38(5). DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2016.1146912. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07075332.2016.1146912

[C5] Peters, P. (2019). "Analysis: Activating Title III of Helms-Burton." Cuba Study Group. http://cubastudygroup.org/csg_resources/analysis-activating-title-iii-of-helms-burton/

[C6] Ponce Alberca, J. (2011). "Anatomy of an 'Internal Affair'." Revista Ayer, Marcial Pons Historia. https://www.revistasmarcialpons.es/revistaayer/article/download/lopez-anatomia-de-un-asunto-interno/2072/5090

[C7] Prevost, G. (1994). "The FSLN as Ruling Party." In Vanden & Prevost (eds.), Democracy and Socialism in Sandinista Nicaragua. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Press and Reference Journalistic Sources

[D1] Americas Quarterly. "Nicaragua coverage: Ortega and the FSLN democratic regression." (Various 2022-2026) https://www.americasquarterly.org

[D2] Axios (18 February 2026). "Rubio's secret squeeze on Raúl Castro's Cuba." https://www.axios.com/2026/02/18/marco-rubio-cuba-secret-talks

[D3] Baker McKenzie (22 January 2025). "Cuba's Designation as State Sponsor of Terrorism: Rescinded then Reinstated." Global Sanctions and Export Controls Blog. https://sanctionsnews.bakermckenzie.com/cubas-designation-as-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism-and-the-cuba-restricted-list-briefly-rescinded-by-outgoing-president-biden-then-reinstated-by-incoming-president-trump/

[D4] El Español (25 February 2026). "CESID detected active participation of several of its officers in the 23-F coup." https://www.elespanol.com/espana/20260225/cesid-detecto-participacion-activa-varios-mandos-golpe-gestiones-encubrirlo/1003744145046_0.html

[D5] France 24 (25 February 2026). "'Shoot to kill': what the declassified archives reveal about the 1981 coup attempt in Spain." https://www.france24.com/es/europa/20260225-disparar-a-matar-lo-que-revelan-los-archivos-desclasificados-sobre-el-intento-golpista-de-1981-en-espa%C3%B1a

[D6] LeoGrande, W. M. (December 2023). "Biden Has No Courage on Cuba." Responsible Statecraft / Quincy Institute. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/biden-cuba-trump/

[D7] The Washington Post (19 November 2009). "Wells Stabler dies; ambassador to Spain in post-Franco era." https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/18/AR2009111803896.html

[D8] WOLA (29 January 2025). "WOLA Welcomes the Removal of Cuba from Terror Sponsor List." https://www.wola.org/2025/01/wola-welcomes-removal-of-cuba-from-terror-sponsor-list-urges-release-of-all-dated/

End.

Hegemony, Transition, and Rupture:Democracy, Revolution, and Hegemonic Asphyxiation:A Comparative Analysis of Political Transitions in Mexico, Nicaragua, Spain, and Cubaunder U.S. Foreign Policy Expanded and revised edition — Four comparative cases with primary and secondary academic sources.