I have had occasion in recent months to reformulate my own life story to myself. The last twenty-two years of my life have been taken up with my defense of the liberal democratic project and the exile imposed as punishment for that commitment. This quest began, intellectually, with my dissertation, whose subject was Hispanic American liberalism. The fact that it was the first research on the subject in the first graduating class of the first Master’s program in political science in the history of Cuba indicates just how challenging the endeavor was. Having overcome, with some effort, the censorship and the dogmatism endemic to our professors’ Leninism, my inquiry into my subject became the first text about liberalism with an explanatory — and not pejorative — intention published in Castro’s Cuba. In very little time I evolved from a democratic socialist informed by classical Marxism to a liberal inspired by the legacy of John Stuart Mill, Carlo Rosselli, and Norberto Bobbio. My hope initially had been to try and reform Cuban society from within, but struggle, police pressure within the university, and the social pressure within spaces organized by the group of young professors and artists to which I belonged nullified that aspiration. The minimal courage to defend what one considers both reasonable and just, despite the overwhelming nature of the undertaking and the possibility of defeat, grew within me from that moment on. Like Alexander Herzen, I didn’t believe we were likely to prevail, but I felt it was right — politically, intellectually, and morally — to persist. But the context was not conducive to dissent — not even of the most minimal kind, or that confined to the intellectual sphere. For within the Cuban system — a replica of the Soviet model — there exists a centralized commission at the Academy of Sciences that determines the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of conducting specific postgraduate studies, as well as who is permitted to undertake them. There is no opportunity to opt out of the state system and pursue postgraduate studies at a private university, since private universities do not exist. In my case — aside from being a professor critical of the system — I became embroiled in a direct dispute with the then-director of the Academy’s Social Sciences division, who accused me of harboring “ideological issues” by employing the concept of “State Socialism” to characterize the Cuban system during an international conference of Marxists held in Havana in 2004. Following that incident, both research topics that I had proposed for my Ph.D. — pluralism within Marxist political theory and civil society in Cuba — were vetoed. It rapidly became clear that my liberal loyalties foreclosed any possibility of completing a doctorate in my own country and I was forced to travel abroad to pursue my studies. The threats were very concrete: I would not be able to work in Cuba on academic matters, and if I continued to publish and to express my views, I could end up in prison. During that time I continued to deepen my knowledge of and commitment to the liberal tradition. But on my second trip to Cuba, I was met with a “reception operation” involving agents at the airport — a ridiculous waste of resources and personnel, serving no purpose other than intimidation. Throughout my stay on the island agents shadowed me around the city. On my penultimate day I was subjected to an interrogation (an illegal one, conducted at an unofficial interrogation facility) that lasted five hours. There was no physical violence, but the psychological pressure was intense. Both before and after that incident — indeed, throughout the entire period — my family and my wife’s family (including relatives who worked for the government) were threatened. I was informed that I would not be welcome back in my native country. Thus began my life in exile. 
I learned the value of freedom on the day that exile ceased to be a metaphor and became my condition. Being expelled from one’s country by a communist dictatorship is not the same as any other trip across the border. That journey came with the collapse of the moral universe in which I was raised. The place that shaped my language, my affections, my earliest hopes, turned overnight into a space that could no longer tolerate my voice. And so defending freedom stopped being my intellectual orientation and became an existential obligation. Exile forces clarity; it strips away the luxury of neutrality. When the state claims to embody history, justice, and the people themselves, disagreement is synonymous with betrayal. In my native country, the Castro regime perfected this logic over decades: it monopolized ideals of equality and sovereignty while dismantling pluralism, crushing civic autonomy, and converting fear into a method of governance. Castro created a system that spoke endlessly of liberation while denying the most basic freedoms. Living under that contradiction taught me that freedom is indivisible, and that any project that sacrifices it in the name of a supposedly higher ideal ends by devouring human dignity. In Mexico I entered a society scarred by traumas and inequalities, but also one with an open public square, competitive elections, and a vibrant civil society. Mexican democracy as I first encountered it was imperfect, noisy, and often frustrating — but it was alive. I could write, speak, and organize, and I could disagree. Mexico became not just a refuge, but a second civic homeland, a place where I could practice the freedom that had been denied me. Yet history is rarely linear, and gratitude does not immunize one against disappointment. Over time, I began to witness the erosion of democratic norms in my country of exile. Populist rhetoric started to hollow out institutions. The government concentrated power in the name of “the people” while delegitimizing pluralism and independent oversight. Critical voices were dismissed as enemies or elites. Complex realities were reduced to moral binaries. The very language I recognized from my Cuban past — though in
Liberal Realism as a Way of Life
