
Ecological Transition in Cuban Legal History
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by Yuniesky San Martín Garcés
Vice President and Legal Consultant – Naturpaz Inc. (USA)
Since the late 19th century, some environmental protection regulations have been present in Cuban legal history. However, the legislation in force at that time was characterized by utilitarian interests, lacking the perception or existence of a holistic approach or proactive practice regarding environmental legal rights.
The Earth and its ecosystems are part of a whole integrated into the most precious legal right: the human being. Natural balance must be legally harmonized with human life because ecology is the sustenance of life. The two rights are intrinsically related; therefore, both must be prioritized in the legal hierarchy due to their extreme sociological importance. The methodological deficit of ignoring the hierarchical importance of the environment or ecology in substantive and procedural law persisted until the first half of the 20th century.
The rise to power of Fidel Castro Ruz's regime in 1959 drastically changed the environmental situation in Cuba. The drive to develop a set of ecological laws and regulations was at odds with the totalitarian political voluntarism of the tyrant Castro. The “maximum leader” exercised absolute power without any judicial or legislative limitations or oversight of his executive decisions. This absolute control allowed him to authorize a series of catastrophic administrative orders, causing considerable damage to multiple Cuban ecosystems—a reality chronicled in fourteen actions in the remarkable work “The Philosophy of Environmentalism” by Juan Alberto De La Nuez Ramírez, President of the Naturpaz Community Councils in central Cuba.
At the beginning of the “institutionalization” period, environmental preservation experienced an attempt to “adjectivize” ecological crimes in the text of the 1976 Constitution, which spuriously replaced the 1940 Constitution. Article 27 of the 1976 Constitution protected environmental law in line with environmentalist thinking, which, even at that time, considered the protection of nature for the well-being of citizens as its fundamental priority.
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