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At Large
Benedict’s Cuban Opportunity
Even a small gesture by the Pope would embolden Cuba’s dissidents.
(Page 2 of 3)
According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, there were more than 600 detentions in February alone.
Two weeks ago, dozens of members of the Ladies in White, a group of mothers, wives, and other female relatives of political prisoners who make silent weekly protests in Havana, were arrested and briefly detained by state police.
The Church rarely denounces these abuses, preferring to avoid direct political confrontation with the regime. The Church has made it clear that it will not play the role it did in, say, Poland during the Cold War, when it became the powerful spiritual voice for the political opposition.
Both the Vatican and Cuban Church see their role as that of mediator between the regime and its opponents. That role worked fairly well in 2010 when the Church helped broker the release to exile of some 115 Cuban political prisoners.
But the Cuban church, and in particular the archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, has been criticized for being too conciliatory toward Raul Castro, who became president in 2008.
Dr. Andy Gomez of the Institute for Cuban & Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, says many Cubans and Cuban Americans are frustrated with Ortega for ignoring the dissidents.
As an example, he cited an incident two weeks ago in which 13 dissidents occupied a Havana church and refused to leave until they had been guaranteed an audience to talk about human rights with the pope. Ortega called in the state police to evict them.
“Historically, the church has always been a sanctuary for the oppressed,” Gomez complained to me about the incident. “To actually ask the government to come in and get them out… it’s a little troublesome.”
Ray Walser, a senior policy analyst specializing in Latin America at the Heritage Foundation, described the relationship between the Church and Cuba’s dissident community as “weary.” He explained that the Church sees itself as a lynchpin in Cuban society, and that, as it looks ahead to a time when the Castro brothers disappear, it “doesn’t want to jeopardize that centrality.”
Benedict’s three-day pilgrimage to Cuba commemorates the 400th anniversary of the discovery of Our Lady of Charity, a miraculous statue of Mary cradling Jesus found floating in a Cuban bay near Santiago de Cuba.
The pope is scheduled to meet twice with Raul Castro, and the Vatican has informed Fidel that Benedict will be “available” should he wish to meet him. Fidel, his daughter told an Italian newspaper, has recently “come closer to religion and to God,” and there are rumors that he wants to rejoin the church.
The pope is expected to press the government to allow the Church to open religious schools and build and refurbish some of its churches and seminaries.
But even a small gesture toward Cuba’s dissident community could have a strong impact. A meeting with a human rights leader, such as Oswaldo Paya Sardinas or Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, or group, such as the Ladies in White, would embolden the opposition and send a strong message to the government. The Ladies in White had requested a visit, but Ortega’s office told them the pope’s schedule would be too tight.
Benedict could call for better conditions in Cuba’s notoriously decrepit prisons. Cuba is one of the only countries in the world that refuses to allow the Red Cross, United Nations, or any other independent organizations to inspect its prisons.
I have heard firsthand from former political prisoners about the inhuman conditions. Last month I met Normando Hernendez, a journalist and former Cuban political prisoner who was released last spring with the Church’s help. He recounted the brutal methods some prisoners used to try to commit suicide in order to escape the inhuman conditions.
About the Author
Daniel Allott is a writer in Washington, D.C.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (16) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 3.26.12 @ 8:37AM
"Today it is evident that Marxist ideology IN THE WAY IT WAS CONCEIVED no longer corresponds to reality," Benedict told reporters accompanying him on his flight from Rome to Mexico, where he spent the weekend. "In this way we can no longer respond and build a society. New models must be found with patience and in a constructive way."
This sounds to me like His Holiness is saying that what we need is not democracy, but a different formulation of Marxism.
The Pope must go where his flock needs him; however, he must be on his guard for the overeager Marxists who are waiting to find vindication in his words. This is what Marxists do best, even in the USA where they call themselves Progressives.
RCV| 3.26.12 @ 3:46PM
No, what he is saying is that Marxism was premised on a view of human behavior that reality has shown us is wholly unrealizable.
Mimi| 3.26.12 @ 12:25PM
A death-bed conversion of Castro could change the Western-Hemisphere. !
Maybe we should pray for a TWOSOME with Hugo Chavez!
Mimi| 3.26.12 @ 12:32PM
Daniel...Good job your articles get hundreds of comments! TAS posters do a great job also.
God Bless the aging Pope Benedict...though highly intellectual ... his words contain simple messeges of truth and what is most important to all mankind. Welcome to the Americas!
john dubose| 3.26.12 @ 3:43PM
The picture that leads this story tells a more poingant story than any of the words. Cuba can not let modern cars into the country because only a handfull of very powerful people could pay for them and the people would have it rubbed in their faces just how backward a country Castro has made it.
RCV| 3.26.12 @ 3:48PM
The US trade embargo is what prevents importation of modern American cars and auto parts into Cuba.
Mike Hawk| 3.26.12 @ 10:44PM
Get real, the average Cuban couldn't buy a car if he wanted. Nobody but the CP officials have anything resembling money and they are the ones driving the '48 Chevy.
JmsA| 3.27.12 @ 12:50AM
And the embargo, and what remains of it, remains in place because of Fidel Castro and his thieving, murderous clan. Don't blame the U.S. Blame the socialist tyrant.
RCV| 3.27.12 @ 12:55AM
I'm not "blaming" the embargo. My point was simply that Cubans love American cars -- anyone who's been there can attest to that fact -- and if they could get them, they would find a way to buy them, especially in Havana.
JmsA| 3.27.12 @ 5:12PM
Okay. You're suggesting, intimating, insinuating, positing, etc., the embargo is the cause of Cubans not getting American cars/parts, which in any case, the regular Cuban cannot obtain on his/her measely $20.00 monthly salary, anyway. You haven't lived it, so you don't get it. Not withstanding the regular Cuban's ingenuity to keep running old American cars, not having regular and personal modes of transportation is part of the all controlling paradigm that is the "Cuban Revolution." Just as is struggling all day to put something on the table for dinner, and clothing your children, per rations and whatnot, as well as providing them with proper medical care in a grossly substandard system, as opposed to the highly touted by some useful idiots, medical facilitities only available to tourists and Cuban government elites. Castro and socialism are the culprit, not the U.S.
JmsA| 3.27.12 @ 5:12PM
Mean to write: culprits.
cicero| 3.26.12 @ 4:05PM
The Pope appears to be very careful in the formulation of his messages to the countries that are under Marxist rule. It is noteworthy that there has never been an internal revolt in Cuba. That could be because the military and police back the dictator, and the people have no weapons. For the Pope to encourage revolution would only put the blood of the people on his hands, as they have no chance of success. The only hope is that the tyrants will die soon, and the successor will either be true to the people, or will invite a coup that may return some semblance of freedom to the citizens. Their only hope is a revolution in the ranks of the military and the police.
JmsA| 3.27.12 @ 12:44AM
"It is noteworthy that there has never been an internal revolt in Cuba."
Sorry, but you're wrong. There has been continued revolt, in any manner possible ever since the communist takeover of the island. And thousands upon thousands have paid for it with their lives and loss of freedom, for decades in many instances (please refer to Dr. Oscar Biscet).
There was also, from 1959 to 1966, armed rebellion in El Escambray mountains in central Cuba, by approximately 5,000 peasants and others, many of whom former revolutionaries. It took tens of thousands of FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces) troops, equiped and led by eastern block and former Spanish republican cadres the better part of six years to finally subdue them. In interesting aside, these anti-socialist rebels had been at the ready near the City of Trinidad, where the orignal Bay of Pigs invasion had been planned to take place, only to have the CIA/Kennedy administration change the landing site to the swampy Bay of Pigs, impractably distant from the rebels.
Your comment that the commies have all the weapons, is correct, and they don't mind using them. Cuban army platoons march through the cities, fully armed and chanting at full throat pro-revolutionary slogans, explicitly threatening harsh measures against anyone even thinking of acts against the revolution. And don't forget the acts of repudiation, whereupon the local CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) in every block can mobilize a mob of thugs and viciously attack anyone perceived a threat to the revolution, often times also at the command of higher ups in the Cuban government. Sound familiar? That's why the prisons are full of political prisoners of conscience, usually under false charges of petty larceny, etc.
The death of one tyrant in Cuba will not make much difference anytime soon. His brother remains in power and alongside him, the military which runs everything for the Castro clan.
POST American| 3.27.12 @ 2:44AM
--------Side op of a fake op ---'90's Show' style------
No more ----no less.
resistance| 3.28.12 @ 8:22AM
Oh, there is so a very active Resistance movement on the Island. The trouble (or perhaps their chief strength) is that they fervently believe in non-violent means of revolt.
I beg of anyone who cares to support the dissidents. Speak up on their behalf if you can, reload their cell phones. Read their blogs (http://translatingcuba.com). Can you translate Spanish into any other language? Come join us at http://hemosoido.com. Sometimes the best weapon is simply world opinion. If the truth is disseminated about what ordinary Cuban life is like, perhaps the world may become disgusted enough to take their displeasure home to Castro II.
@JmsA: It is true that the "death of one tyrant ... will not make much difference anytime soon." But the death of the *right two* tyrants? That just may (maybe) open the floodgates. Ojalá. On that day, the Cuban people will need massive humanitarian assistance. It is our duty, as citizens of the free world, to see to it that it is received and applied as needed.
The Cuban people have suffered a long time for nothing. The "average Cuban" (whatever that is) lives in substandard housing, and is starving. Until this tyranny is overturned, there is no way for us to help them. I pray for its prompt demise.
Christ is King| 3.28.12 @ 12:20PM
Praise God, Jesus Christ is LORD!
tp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il2whd6TLA0&feature=youtu.be