Cuba’s parliamentary history started in unison with the pro-independence clamor, when all the insurgent forces on the island joined in forming a single revolutionary government whose first decision was to declare all men equal in our land, colonized in that time by the Spanish slave empire.

On April 16, 1869, in the small Camagüeyan town of Guáimaro, the House of Representatives (mambí parliament) began its legislative work with the attendance of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Ignacio Agramonte, José Joaquín Palma, Eduardo Machado, Antonio Zambrana and other patriots. These men worked to provide an institutional structure for the liberation struggle and drew up the Republic in Arms’ war policy and its democratic guarantees for individual freedom and rights.

This attitude of respect for institutions – even in the midst of bitter combats – continued throughout the two wars of independence that our mambises fought (1868-78 and 1895-98).

Four constitutions were proclaimed, during this period, three of them (Guáimaro in 1869, Jimaguayú in 1895 and La Yaya in 1897) asserted the same principle of revolutionary struggle – broadened and adapted in each successive document to fit the events and trends of the times – as the only means to win full independence and establish a sovereign republic.

Other Constitution was adopted in the troubled period of March 1878, after the virile attitude of General Antonio Maceo in the Protest of Baraguá repudiating the capitulatory nature of the Zanjón Pact. This Constitution - known as the Constitution of Baraguá – provided a legal basis to the essence of that historic protest by stating that peace could only come with independence.

The American intervention in the Spanish-Cuban conflict wrested from the mambises the victory they had won fighting with their machetes on the blazing manigua. Thus, emergent US imperialism launched a new kind of filibusterism.

Cuba was granted formal independence on May 20, 1902, but it was conditioned by the US Congress on the acceptance of an amendment to the Cuban Constitution (the Platt Amendment) which, among other things, gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba whenever it so desired and the installation of a Yankee naval base in the national territory.

The sarcasm of that republic could not be greater. The United States assumed themselves the right to intervene in the island and forced the Cuban government to consult with them the principal decisions, while the Constitution declared in force by Order No. 181, issued by the Yankee Military Governor in 1901, stated in its first article that:

"The people of Cuba are constituted in an independent sovereign state and have adopted the republic as their form of government."

Article 43 of that document added:

"Sovereignty rests in the people of Cuba, from whom all public powers flow."

In the midst of this fiction, a Congress composed of a Senate and a House of Representatives was constituted, and a President of the Republic was elected. This was the scaffolding of the neocolony.

Bur the Republic was crippled at birth. Privileges of class and wealth destroyed the dreams of Céspedes, Agramonte, Gómez, Maceo and José Martí, the organizer and leader of the liberation war of 1895, and the ablest, most advanced liberator of his time. Corrupt political parties were formed, a police force made up of informers and an army to repress the people were set up and obtained ample funds and weapons from the US government; the judiciary was placed at the service of the highest bidder; and a servile press sprang up everywhere.

Unmistakable proof of this is the fact that, while the first decree emanating from that first Congress of the Republic authorized the executive branch to negotiate a 35 million pesos loan to pay the veterans of the mambí army, only half that amount ever reached its destination, while the rest was used to line the pockets of those new, big-stick politicians in a monstrous show of plunder and usury.

Corruption reached unimaginable proportions. Robbery, extortion, fraud and swindle were daily fare in that world of gangsters that appeared with the Republic, and lasted since 1902 with the government of Estrada Palma to 1958 with the government of Fulgencio Batista.

Politicians – both Senators and Representatives – disparagingly known as "the grafters", participated in fraudulent contracts, the lottery, and such juicy businesses as the hotel chain the US Mafia had established in the island’s capital. As co-partners in crime, they were responsible for the devastating, brutal dictatorships that saddened thousands of Cuban homes.

Some very important events also took place during those 50 years: the renovating action of communist leaders Julio Antonio Mella and Rubén Martinez Villena, and the worthy revolutionary attitude of the patriot Antonio Guiteras during the ´30s, after the people’s victory over the bloody tyranny of Gerardo Machado⁵. As Secretary of the Interior, Guiteras proved himself a worthy heir to the tradition of bravery begun by those who had died in the independence wars and decreed the most radial measures taken during the pseudo-Republic, including the nationalization of US monopolies.

Yankee support to the archcriminal Fulgencio Batista and the connivance of the Cuban political parties cut short that remarkable show of dignity. Guiteras was soon removed, the properties were handed back to US firms and hired assassins implacably persecuted Guiteras until they managed to murder him when he was about to leave the country to organize the armed struggle for a new revolution.

From 1939 to 1940, the few progressive representatives in the Constituent Assembly forced the other representatives to adopt a Constitution whose text represented a step forward, but its precepts were never put into practice. To apply them, a revolution was necessary, "a machete charge" - as the poet and distinguished revolutionary Rubén Martínez Villena put it – in order to finish off all the rogues.

That revolution began in 1953, with the attack on the Moncada Garrison led by Fidel Castro. The landing of the Granma in 1956 continued that revolution, which heroic selfless fighting in the mountains and cities brought to final victory on January 1^st, 1959.

The institutionalization of the Revolution began right in the moment that was destroyed the system of the pseudorepublic, even though the Revolutionary Government carried out functions with a certain grade of provisionality during its first 15 years.

As Fidel Castro explained at the First Congress of the Communist Party:

Those years (from 1959 to 1975) were characterized by a situation of deep, radical and intensive revolutionary changes, and also it was necessary to confront the violent aggressions of the imperialism and the internal counterrevolution.

It was necessary an agile, operative and efficient state machine to cope with these problems and to confront the tasks of that moment, a machine that could exercise the representation of the working people and could be able to take quickly decisions.

When the Revolutionary Government concentrated in itself the legislative, the executive and the administrative faculties, it rightly carried out its functions during the first stage of its fight to survive: it announced revolutionary laws, it expropriated exploiters, it developed basic social mutations, successfully carried out the political fight against external and internal aggressions. In this period, with the massive support of the people, the Revolutionary Government gave an impulse to deep and vast political, economic, social and cultural transformations in the Cuban life.

It is unquestionable the fact, that it is not exist another case in the history in which the leadership of a revolution has counted on such effective, combative and total support of the people, on an endless confidence and revolutionary enthusiasm of the population and on a such complete unity as the one offered by the Cuban people to their leaders and, particularly, to the Commandant in Chief Fidel Castro.

In 1974, the revolutionary government decided to make a trial run, in Matanzas Province, of a new system of local government: People’s Power.

The aim of this experience was to confirm a series of criterions referring to methodological forms of improving the functions of the representative State Institutions as well as those regarding demographic, territorial and economic relations among others.

Right from the start, the masses participated actively in the tasks of government, administrative control and searching of solutions to the problems which came up most frequently.

The fruits of that experience were reflected in the decisions that led to the establishment of People’s Power in the 169 municipalities and 14 provinces in which the country is divided.

On October 10 and 17, 1976, 95,2 percent of all Cubans 16 years of age and older cast direct and secret ballots to choose among a total of more than 30 000 candidates and elect the 10 725 delegates to the Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power.