Abstract
Social movements scholars have acknowledged that although social movements have historically used legal tactics to advance their causes and legal frameworks affect their strategies and outcomes, we lack a general theory of the reciprocal relations between collective action and legal institutions. This dissertation addresses this gap by arguing that law is contingent and how it matters for social movements varies with the context and character of social struggles. By asking, “how does law matter,” I bring the sociology of law to the center of understanding social movements that contest authoritarianism and seek progressive social change by examining the case of Cuba.This project draws on a vast array of sources, with the recently available and rare archive of the Havana Urgency Court (HUC) as my leading source. Drawing on 106 criminal cases, I trace how this court prosecuted political activists in Havana from 1952 to 1958 –the critical years before the 1959 government takeover. Simultaneously, in defiance of its inquisitorial layout, I uncover how the very structures of repression opened up spaces for developing formal and informal practices of legal mobilization. Moreover, I examine how dissenters negotiated revolutionary identities through contentious interactions in this special court and other related legal settings, such as police precincts and prisons. This genealogy of the political role of law in the Cuban revolution crosses over 1959 to follow the trajectories of some protesters, lawyers, and judges who consistently appeared in the Havana Urgency Court records. I focus on two parallel processes: retroactive petitions of anti-Batista fighters to annul HUC convictions and cancel their criminal records and state-led purges of legal professionals. In this way, I show how pre-revolutionary trends in mobilization shaped the post-revolutionary political, social, and legal reconstruction.This dissertation follows a mixed-method data collection strategy combining the Havana Urgency Court data, newspapers and periodicals, official documents, personal archives, pre-existing testimonial and biographical accounts, and original oral histories. I use data triangulation as an effective way to overcome state records’ potential bias and increase validity. I apply a mixed-method comparative analysis of the rhythms of contention incorporating quantitative and qualitative content analyses. Empirical findings include variations in formal and informal practices of civil society legal mobilization in relation to prevalent forms of legal repression by the state. I introduce the concept of legal cultures of opposition to explain how legal professionals and dissenters perceive legal threats and mobilize law in response to them.Overall, my dissertation advances the cultural study of legal power by refocusing analytical attention on the paradoxical role of law in an authoritarian and revolutionary context that has been under-studied in law and social movement studies. Even key social movement guides give scant attention to law and the courts as sites of struggle (e.g., Almeida 2019a). Furthermore, this research contributes to the emergence of a fifth generation in the sociology of revolutions and a recent historiographical turn in Cuban studies.