Cuban dissident movement

The Cuban dissident movement, (Spanish: Movimiento disidente cubano) also known as the Cuban democracy movement (Spanish: Movimiento democratico cubano) or simply the Cuban opposition (Spanish: Oposición cubana), is a political movement in Cuba whose for aim is to start a democratic transition in Cuba. It differs from the early opposition to Fidel Castro which occurred from 1959 to 1968, and instead consists of the internal opposition movement birthed by the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976. This opposition later became an active social movement during the Special Period in the 1990s, as various civic organizations began jointly calling for a democratic transition in Cuba. The movement is made up of various actors, from conservative democrats who favor free market economics to left-leaning social democrats and democratic socialists. All activists typically agree on the need for expanding democratic rights, and some level of legal free enterprise.

Scholars Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Alfredo Prieto claim that their 2019 polling shows few Cubans are familiar with dissident leaders or propositions, mostly because top dissidents focus their efforts on demanding the release of friends and relatives from jail, and not on organizing mass movements for general freedoms. They also claim being a dissident is difficult to do in public, because a public dissident group would be "quickly and firmly repressed by security forces". According to the Harvard International Review, dissident groups are weak and usually infiltrated by Cuban state security. Media is totally state-controlled, thus dissidents find it difficult to organize and "Many of their leaders have shown enormous courage in defying the regime. Yet, time and again, the security apparatus has discredited or destroyed them. They do not represent a major threat to the regime."

Some dissident groups in the Cuban diaspora received both funding and assistance from the U.S. Intelligence Community during the Cold War, which has caused the Communist Party of Cuba to allege that all dissidents are part of a United States strategy to covertly destabilize the Party's control over the country.