The [Roman Catholic] Church in Cuba… We think of the Church like everyone else. It has been assaulted. It has been demonized. It has suffered much repression. That is if we view the Church as a community. I am Catholic. Now, if we view the Church as the ecclesiastic hierarchy, as the control and the monopoly of a group of persons led by [Cardinal] Jaime Ortega Alamino and under the influence of certain Vatican officials, we consider that the Church has displayed an ambiguous stance, insensitive and even complicit with the dictatorship.
[Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino (1936 – ) is the Archbishop of Havana and a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.]
The Church, the Cuban ecclesiastical hierarchy, has not known how to behave consistently, with firmness, or with a Cuban nature. We are not asking [Cardinal] Jaime Ortega to join our protests or marches, nor are we asking him to visit the prisons. We are asking him to be consistent with the Church’s own Christian commitment.
[During Pope] Benedict XVI’s last visit, of which our country has a very bad memory, the Cuban ecclesiastical hierarchy [seemingly] conspired against the opposition and the people. For example, when those that organized Benedict XVI’s schedule allowed a meeting with Fidel Castro, who was no longer Head of State, but prohibited meetings with the Ladies in White, Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, Dagoberto Valdes, and important opposition leaders, they were causing us harm.
[Pope Benedict XVI (1927 – ), born Joseph Ratzinger, led the Roman Catholic Church from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. He visited Cuba in March 2012. Fidel Castro (1926 – ) led the Cuban Revolution and seized power in 1959. He established a communist dictatorship in Cuba and led the country until 2008. The Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco) is a civil society organization founded by the mothers, spouses and daughters of dissidents who were imprisoned by Cuban authorities during the “Black Spring” crackdown in March 2003. They practice nonviolent resistance against the repression of civil liberties on the island of Cuba and support political prisoners. Oswaldo Paya Sardinas (1952 – 2012) was a Cuban dissident who founded the Christian Liberation Movement. He was awarded the Andrej Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament for his opposition activity. He died in a mysterious automobile accident, which many have alleged was orchestrated by the Cuban government. Dagoberto Valdes Hernandez (1955 – ) is a Cuban freedom activist and Catholic scholar.]
It is inconceivable that none of the Cuban Catholic bishops had the courage, commitment, consistency, and sense of justice to mention the surge of arrests and repression against the Cuban opposition movement during that time. They interrupted telephone communications of all the active opposition. Our homes were under siege for days. However, the bishops did not mention it, nor perhaps did they communicate this information to the Pope.
Jorge Luis García Pérez (better known as “Antúnez”) was born in Placetas, Cuba in 1964. He is the leader of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Resistance Front. The Front is a Cuban civil society organization named for a political prisoner who died while on a hunger strike in 2010.
As an Afro-Cuban, Antúnez experienced the regime’s discrimination against minorities in restricting both educational and career opportunities. Such treatment, along with severe political repression, contributed to his disenchantment with the regime.
Antúnez, inspired by freedom movements in Eastern Europe, became active in the Cuban opposition. In March 1990, he was arrested for publically denouncing the Castro regime and sentenced to five years in prison. Despite his incarceration, Antúnez remained defiant by refusing to wear a prisoner’s uniform and rejecting the government’s re-education programs.
Antúnez also created the Pedro Luis Boitel political prisoners group in honor of the famous prisoner of conscience who died during a hunger strike in 1972. Through this organization, the prisoners drew inspiration and encouragement to continue their struggle. As a result, Antúnez was subject to solitary confinement, torture, and an extension of his five year sentence. He endured 17 years of prison before being released in 2007.
Antúnez continues advocating for freedom and democracy in Cuba with his wife, Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera, leader of the Rosa Parks Feminist Movement for Civil Rights. His work involves supporting Cuban political prisoners, and expanding political freedoms and civil liberties.
Twitter: @antunezcuba
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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