The churches in Cuba – all churches – but I speak specifically of the Catholic Church, are impartial. I assure you of that, because I am a member. It is impartial.
It is a church open to the humble, to the people. A church that offers messages about Cuba’s reality, Cubans’ lives, and how to find spiritual relief and strength. It´s what encourages the people.
But the church in Cuba is also repressed by the regime, even if it has nothing to do with the regime, because it is an independent institution. [The regime] fears it.
The priests are threatened by State Security agents and told: “Why do you allow those people in the church?” Then they hear: “The church is open to all people, for the poor, the highest, the military, anyone who wants to enter.”
They are afraid. I assure you that they are afraid.
[Pope] John Paul II’s message was inspiring. A message of life. A message of courage for Cubans. A message that we had not even heard from our priests, saying, “Be a leader yourself, do not be afraid.” [Pope John Paul II (1920 – 2005) was born Karol Wotyla in Poland. He became a priest in the Roman Catholic Church and after becoming Archbishop of Krakow, was named the first Polish pope in 1978. Pope John Paul II made a historic visit to Cuba in January 1998. During an open-air mass in Santiago, John Paul II delivered a message to the tens of thousands gathered endorsing political freedom and civil liberty. It was the first visit to the island by a pope.]
That public message in a packed square was very good for Cubans and for the Cuban church, too.
The visit of His Holiness John Paul [II] at that time was also a scary visit for the regime. They were afraid of what might happen. There were large groups headed toward the squares that they could not control very well. They were afraid. They arrested many. They did not allow us to go to the squares to participate in John Paul’s [II] masses and hear his homilies.
My husband and I experienced that same aggression from the regime. The bus in which we travelled with other members of our Catholic Church of Saint Catherine of Siena, from Perico, Matanzas, was turned away as we neared the square.
They did that because the State Security had called our priest and told him not to allow us to go to the mass at the José Martí Square in Havana. He was told to kick us off the bus. The priest refused and said that we had the same right to attend.
Then to cause annoyance and to turn us against each other, so that our congregation felt that they had been harassed and repressed due to our cause, no one on the bus was allowed to participate. So, it was a difficult encounter, set in motion by the State Security because we were members of the opposition.
Those messages given by His Holiness at that time, John Paul II, were well taken by Cubans. I think since then, since 1998, more movements have emerged, more people and groups decided to speak publicly about the regime. To denounce the condemnations and now even the lay Catholic Church [decided] to express itself more freely without fear. And to welcome more people, from the opposition or dissent.
Alejandrina García de la Riva was born on April 12, 1966, in Matanzas, Cuba. Her first years of life were spent on a sugar mill in the municipality of Calimente. She went to technical school at the Álvaro Reynoso Institute in order to study agriculture and agronomy and held jobs as a statistician, grocer, independent journalist, and a correspondent for Servicio Noticuba, a press agency considered illegal by the Cuban government.
In 1983, Alejandrina married Diosdado González Marrero, a decision that ultimately led her down the path of nonviolent civil resistance. Together the couple has two children and three grandchildren.
In March 2003, Alejandrina’s husband was one of 75 nonviolent dissidents to be arrested in a massive government crackdown known as the Black Spring. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In response, Alejandrina and other wives, mothers, and sisters of those imprisoned during the Black Spring founded the Ladies in White [Damas de Blanco].
The Ladies in White became a formidable civil society organization that planned weekly marches through the streets of Havana, peacefully protesting for the freedom of political prisoners and the expansion of civil liberties and political freedoms in Cuba. As a result of her participation, Alejandrina was arrested and harassed by the Cuban authorities on numerous occasions.
Alejandrina played a crucial role in orchestrating the release of her husband and other Black Spring political prisoners. The Ladies in White lobbied Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the leading representative of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, and convinced him to negotiate for the release of the prisoners. By 2011, after years of protests and several hunger strikes, the Black Spring dissidents, including Alejandrina’s husband, were released. While the majority of the prisoners went into exile, Alejandrina and Diosdado chose to remain in Cuba.
Alejandrina lives in Mantazas Province and remains active in the Ladies in White Movement.
Cuba, an island nation of 11.4 million people in the northern Caribbean Sea, is a totalitarian state.
Fidel Castro led the 1959 Cuban Revolution and ruled the country for 49 years before formally relinquishing power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Raul Castro is the current head of state and First Secretary of the Communist Party, which is recognized by the Cuban Constitution as the only legal political party and “the superior leading force of society and of the state.” Raul Castro has said that he will step down from power at the age of 86 in 2018.
Cuba was a territory of Spain until the Spanish-American War. The United States assumed control of the island until 1902, when the Republic of Cuba became formally independent. A fledgling democracy was established, with the U.S. continuing to play a strong role in Cuban affairs.
In 1952, facing an impending electoral loss, former president Fulgencio Batista staged a successful military coup and overthrew the existing government. While his first term as elected president in the 1940s largely honored progressive politics, universal freedoms, and the Cuban Constitution of 1940, Batista’s return to power in the 1950s was a dictatorship marked by corruption, organized crime and gambling. He held power until 1959 when he was ousted by Fidel Castro’s rebel July 26th Movement.
While promising free elections and democracy, Castro moved quickly to consolidate power. By 1961, Castro had declared Cuba to be a communist nation.
Castro’s communist government nationalized private businesses, lashed out at political opponents, and banned independent civil society. As Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, Cuban-American relations soured, including a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war, after the Soviets installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, prompting a U.S. naval embargo.
Since the revolution, Cuba has remained a one-party state. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the evaporation of Soviet economic support, Cuba loosened some economic policies, became more open to foreign investment, and legalized use of the U.S. dollar. By the late 1990s, Venezuela had become Cuba’s chief patron, thanks to the close relationship between the Castro brothers and Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez.
The regime continues to exercise authoritarian political control, clamping down on political dissent and mounting defamation campaigns against dissidents, portraying them as malignant U.S. agents. In a massive crackdown in 2003 known as the Black Spring, the government imprisoned 75 of Cuba’s best-known nonviolent dissidents.
The Cuban government does not respect the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, movement, and religion. The government and the Communist Party control all news media, and the government routinely harasses and detains its critics, particularly those who advocate democracy and respect of human rights. Frequent government actions against dissidents often take the form of attacks by regime-organized mobs. Prison conditions are harsh and often life-threatening, and the courts operate as instruments of the Communist Party rather than conducting fair trials.
Cuba relaxed its travel laws in 2013, allowing some prominent dissidents to leave and return to the country. It continues to experiment with modest economic reforms but remains committed to communist economic orthodoxy.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Cuba was designated as “not free” and is grouped near the bottom of the world’s nations, with severely restricted civil rights and political liberties.
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