The Forgiveness the Cuban Government Refuses to Grant
HAVANA TIMES – Some decisions mark the difference between exercising power and sustaining it wisely. One of them is knowing when to resort to forgiveness as an expression of leadership. Far from being seen as weakness, presidential pardon has historically served as a legitimate faculty of the executive branch to correct excesses, demonstrate authority, and repair the relationship with citizens.
In modern political tradition, it is not only a legal figure but also a symbolic gesture. In many Latin American countries, it has been used to make amends, close chapters, defuse tensions, or simply show humanity on behalf of the state. It has served to bring calm in contexts of social protest, as in Colombia after agreements with insurgent groups, or to free political prisoners during democratic transitions, as in Chile and Argentina after the military dictatorships—where it became part of complex debates on justice and reconciliation.
In Cuba, however, although the possibility of a pardon is included in the Constitution, its application has been almost exclusively limited to scenarios of political negotiation or external pressure, rather than an institutional practice of justice or internal reconciliation within society.
The 2019 Constitution, Article 128 states that the “President of the Republic has the power to grant pardons and to request the National Assembly of People’s Power to grant amnesties.” Both figures (pardon and amnesty) are part of classical criminal law and originate in the so-called “grace of the sovereign”: an exceptional power to intervene where the strict application of the law becomes excessive or unjust. While a pardon forgives the sentence without erasing the crime, an amnesty even erases the punishable act.
Despite this legal framework, the Cuban government has effectively ruled out amnesty as a political tool, due to its collective nature and the symbolic implication that an entire group should not have been convicted—or was subjected to judicial excesses and violence, particularly for political reasons.
Yet it remains a demand, especially among activists and the families of people imprisoned after the July 11, 2021, protests and other smaller-scale demonstrations that followed. In January 2024, a group of relatives of political prisoners submitted a petition to the National Assembly of People’s Power requesting an Amnesty Law to release participants of the July 11 protests. The letter, addressed to Ana María Mari Machado, vice president of the Parliament, appealed to a legal and humanitarian resolution given the severity of the imposed sentences. However, the Assembly replied with a brief statement declaring the request “inadmissible.”
In these prisoner release processes, the Catholic Church has played a key role as intermediary—as happened in 2010 with the release of more than 100 political prisoners, and in 2015, on the occasion of Pope Francis’s visit, when a collective pardon freed more than 3,500 common prisoners. According to legal expert Luis Carlos Battista, “since 2010, the figure of the pardon has been used on at least four occasions (Decree 1 of 2011, Decree 1 of 2015, Decree 1 of 2016, Decree 1 of 2019) to release hundreds of convicts amid political negotiations with the governments of Spain or the United States, or at the request of the Holy See.”
More recently, following Vatican-mediated negotiations, the government announced the release of 553 people, though only 210 were recognized as political prisoners by Justicia 11J. According to figures from Prisoners Defenders, as of the end of March 2025, there were 1,152 political prisoners in Cuba.
Nevertheless, even this figure (pardon) is not employed with full transparency. When the Cuban government decides to release certain individuals, it prefers to use terms like “conditional release” or “extra-penal license”—formulas that maintain a latent threat of punishment and allow reimprisonment if deemed necessary. Maricela Sosa Ravelo, vice president of the Cuban Supreme People’s Court, confirmed this approach by stating that the release of 553 people was neither an amnesty nor a pardon, but a benefit of “early release.” As a result, the convicted remain subject to strict conditions and can be returned to prison if those conditions are violated, as happened with opposition leaders José Daniel Ferrer and Felix Navarro, whose benefits were later revoked.
So, why aren’t these mechanisms used if there’s no legal obstacle? The answer lies not in legal norms but in how political power is structured in Cuba. The political line is drawn by the Communist Party of Cuba, and the presidential role operates within narrow limits, without autonomy to make decisions not previously approved. Furthermore, in the few public sessions the Parliament holds each year, no amnesty proposal has ever been debated, at least not openly—even though this demand has appeared in the electoral base. That rigid verticality, more than cautiousness, reflects insecurity. What would be a calm act of authority elsewhere becomes unthinkable in Cuba.
The refusal to exercise forgiveness is all the more serious when one considers historical precedents to the contrary. In 1955, dictator Fulgencio Batista granted a general amnesty that freed Fidel Castro and the Moncada assailants. He did not do so out of humanitarian conviction, but political calculation. There was internal pressure, institutional fatigue, and a need to rebuild his image. He understood that clemency did not weaken him—on the contrary. The Cuban Revolution was born in the wake of an amnesty, and it is paradoxical that today the strategic value of forgiveness is denied.
Recent history offers painful examples. Journalist Gabriel Berrenechea, imprisoned in November 2024 and still awaiting trial, was arrested for participating in a peaceful protest in Encrucijada, Villa Clara. He requested to see his 84-year-old mother, Zoila, who was ill and without assistance. She too requested permission to see her son. The petition was ignored, and Zoila died on May 4. Only after her death was Berrenechea allowed, under guard, to attend the wake. The government missed an opportunity to show humanity, and the outrage grew both inside and outside Cuba.
When someone is imprisoned for political reasons in Cuba, it’s not just that person who suffers—their small children, elderly mothers, and partners struggling with daily survival are left behind. In a country marked by scarcity and exhaustion, and with one of the most rapidly aging populations on the continent, every imprisonment leaves another family more vulnerable. Zoila knew it. She was the mother of Gabriel Berrenechea, who is not a murderer or a rapist—he is an independent journalist who exercised his right to peaceful protest.
Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government is not only facing a moment of institutional breakdown and loss of legitimacy—it is also wasting every opportunity to act with political intelligence or common sense. Every gesture that could humanize power is stubbornly avoided, as if empathy were a luxury incompatible with governance. But in this persistent refusal, the government not only grows more distant from the citizenry, it also hands strong arguments to the opposition and discourages those, on the left or in critical positions, still seeking common ground or spaces for dialogue. How can one defend a political structure that, beyond its mistakes, acts with unnecessary coldness and clumsiness?
Politics demands intelligence, and that sometimes means knowing how to forgive. In a country burdened by deep wounds, exercising forgiveness openly and strategically could represent a minimal act of wisdom and humanity. Refusing to do so is not a technical detail, it’s a political decision that reveals the gulf between those who govern and the society they claim to represent. A well-communicated act of clemency can have a greater impact than the harshest sentence. But clemency remains pending, an unfinished act in a system that was once born from it, and today seems incapable of recognizing its value.
First published in Spanish by La Joven Cuba and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.
the assumption is that the government has a heart: some sense of moral integrity however any lawyer will tell there is no provision for LOVE in the law!