As Cuba prepares to build a luxury golf resort on the island with clubs and residences for the exclusive enjoyment of foreigners and their hard cash, Cuban American attorney, Jose Manuel Palli, who is not a “hardline intransigent” Cuban exile by any stretch of the imagination, explains how according to the laws of the Castro dictatorship, there are no real rights to real property in Cuba. In other words, all the hoopla surrounding the recent “reform” to allow the sale and purchase of homes in Cuba is actually just that: hoopla.
According to the Castro constitution, all real estate in Cuba is owned by the state and the only “right” individuals have in regards to real estate is the right to occupy it. And as we all know, that is a right that is easily and often arbitrarily rescinded by the Cuban regime on a whim.
Analysis: Cuba’s derechos de superficie: Are they ‘real’ property rights?
[…] Cuba’s Constitution, in article 14, clearly delineates the limits to “buying properties” in Cuba, when it defines the concept of property as social property, as opposed to private property. It enshrines that concept of social property (or socialist property, if you wish) as the foundation of Cuba’s societal and economic model, and this concept of property underpins another key phrase found in the same article 14 of the Cuban Constitution: the principle of social distribution.
Even though Cuban Law recognizes certain forms of individually owned property (propiedad personal), this does not mean that when you buy a house from a Cuban individual, who can prove to you he owns that house, what you are buying is equivalent to what we call private property rights.
According to article 129.1 of the Cuban Civil Code, a property (or ownership) right in Cuba gives the individual person who holds it possession over the thing (bien) he or she owns, the right to use and enjoy that thing, and to dispose of it, pursuant to the socio-economic purpose such thing is destined to fulfill. And that socio-economic purpose is the one the Cuban Constitution defines — in the case of a housing unit it fulfills every Cuban’s constitutional right to housing — which is to say it is not the one we ascribe to private property rights (Cubans still cannot mortgage the houses they live permanently in, for instance).
The changes made in Cuba in November 2011 were made exclusively to its Housing laws, and neither the Cuban Constitution nor the Civil Code has been changed. Therefore, the scheme of things described in the preceding paragraphs has not changed one bit, and it applies to all the different derechos reales in Cuba, including superficie rights.
You can read the entire legal analysis HERE.
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