The forgotten Catholic dissidents

Cuba
The forgotten Catholic dissidents
Posted at: 2009-01-01 20:27:00.0
Author: Austen Ivereigh

Amidst the coverage of the muted celebrations of the Cuban Revolution's
50th birthday, some good news: Cardinal Jaime Ortega of Havana and four
other bishops were able, for the first time since 1959, to celebrate
Mass on Christmas Day in several Cuban jails.

Some of the prisoners were especially glad to see the bishops. They are
activists in the Varela Project, a human rights petition akin to Charter
88 in Czechoslovakia which is led by Oswaldo Payá, a Gandhi-like figure
who leads the fledgling pro-democracy movement in Cuba.

The clue to the Catholic inspiration of the Varela Project is in its
name. The priest-patriot Fr Félix Varela (1788 -1953) was the first
architect of the Cuban independence movement. He was sentenced to death
for his campaign against slavery but escaped to the US -- he was for a
time vicar-general of New York -- where he published pro-independence
tracts. He is an "official" hero in Cuba, but far overshadowed in
offical propaganda by José Martí, the nineteenth-century liberal patriot
in whose mantle Fidel Castro has always sought to cloak himself.

In 2003 Cardinal Ortega issued a letter on Fr Varela's 150th anniversary
-- officially to bolster the cause for his canonisation in Rome, but
more particularly to define a vision for the transition. In reminding
Cubans of Varela's democratic and Christian vision for Cuba, he was
gently offering a post-Castro manifesto.

The cardinal made clear that contemporary Cuba is about as far from
Varela's vision as it is possible to be. He described the "despair,
tiredness and monotony" of Cubans, their anxiety about the future, and
the desperation to make a decent living which has forced so many into
illegal activities or exile. (Most Cubans are perforce engaged in
"black-market" activities; the state turns a blind eye -- until they do
something political. Then the police descend.)

Carrdinal Ortega also deplored the corrosion of Cuban society, its
astonishingly high rates of abortion and divorce, its alcoholism and
promiscuity, as well as the broken state of the Revolution's
much-vaunted health and education systems. He singled out for fierce
criticism the boarding schools in the countryside where teenagers are
separated from their families to be indoctrinated -- and usually abused.

There was nothing in the letter that a Spanish-speaking visitor to the
island will not see for himself or hear every day from Cubans – in
lowered tones on the street, or in the privacy of cars. But seeing it in
print was astonishing.

Soon after that letter, just as the Varela Project was gathering a
petition calling for human rights and democracy, came the most severe
clampdown in Cuba in 20 years.

With the world's attention deflected by the Iraq war, and on the pretext
that President George W. Bush - who had tightened the disastrously
counter-productive US economic embargo - was about to invade, Castro
ordered the arrest of 75 dissidents, who were charged with aiding and
abetting the imperialist enemy.

Many were well-known "independent" -- that is, illegal -- Cuban
journalists writing for foreign newspapers. But 25 of the 75 were
leaders of the Varela Plan, which was the real target of the crackdown.
(To have arrested the 25 alone would have drawn attention to it and them.)

The regime was rattled by the Varela Plan, because this was a movement
for democratic change was coming not from embittered
counterrevolutionaries in Miami, but from home: from Cuban Catholic
laymen opposed to the US embargo.

Two weeks after the crackdown -- known in Cuba as the 'Black Spring' --
the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) group was formed, gathering on
Sundays at Havana's Santa Rita de Casia church. To this day they
continue to walk 10 blocks to a nearby park after Mass. In the spirit of
Argentina's Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Cuban women dress in
white, with each woman carrying a pink flower and calling for the
prisoners' release.

The US bishops need to ensure that the release of the Varela Plan
leaders, many of whom remain in Cuba's jails five years after their
arrest, is high on President-elect Obama's policy agenda for the island
-- together with a lifting of the US embargo, which has only buttressed
the regime

Those prisoners are the architects of the new, post-socialist Cuba:
patriotic, democratic and Christian. Only when they are released can
Cuba be recognised as being on the path to democracy.

(To follow: the institutional Church's position in Cuba).

http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&id=94FB181A-1438-5036-4F9D64A3D3B9758D