Iván García, Translator: Unstated
The flirtations of Castro with the Vatican are nothing new. After all,
for brothers born in Biran, Holguin, 700 kilometers from Havana, in the
wooden house on high pilings where they lived, God and the Bible were
common in their childhood.
Their parents, Angel Castro, a descendant of Galicia, and their mother
Lina Ruz, worshiped Jesus Christ. The education of the two men who have
ruled the destinies of Cuba in the last 53 years had a strong Catholic
influence.
So no wonder the Castro's wink at the Vatican. It has been a formidable
spin. Pure political juggling. A future strategy.
After a stormy and hostile period against the priests, Catholics and of
other religions, where not a few went to jail or were imprisoned in
labor camps, Fidel Castro changed his policy of confrontation. It was
because of the rise to power by popular and democratic vote of Salvador
Allende in Chile in 1971, that Castro was restated his strategy of
gunfire toward the Vatican.
Latin America was and is the region with the greatest number of
Catholics worldwide. The bearded commander realized at once that any
revolution, whether through elections or armed uprising, should begin by
acknowledging the role played by priests, bishops and cardinals in a new
proposal for social change and advocacy of the always excluded in the
hemisphere.
From the guerrilla priest Camilo Torres in Colombia, the Brazilian
Bishop Helder Camara, to the theologians of the doctrine of liberation
such as Leonardo Boff and Frei Betto, Castro realized that to further
his dream of continental revolution he had to play with the ball of the
fervent Catholicism in Latin America.
And he began to design a new ideological castling. The Fourth Congress
of the Communist Party in 1991, he accepted as members believers of any
denomination.
A philosophical contradiction in spades for atheists and pure Marxists.
But Fidel Castro decided to look away. He knew that with the advent of
democracy on the continent, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise
of the Soviet Union, he had to change the rules.
He realized that to subvert, ideas were more important than bullets. And
if these ideas were proclaimed from the pulpit by a Monsignor like
Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador, so much the better. The armed struggle in
Latin America had no future. The ELN and the FARC in Colombia became a
bunch of terrorists and drug traffickers.
Better to reestablish a new kind of anti-imperialism, taking advantage
of the opportunities for democracy, even if it is imperfect and is full
of corrupt people who see power as a throne, practice nepotism and steal
from the public coffers.
Precisely the wrong course of traditional parties in the hemisphere
allowed the 'enlightened' such as Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Rafael
Correa to enter through the back door. With exotic polarized crazy
speeches … wearing under his arm a proposed 21st century socialism, no
one knows for sure the course one can take.
These new 'little fathers of the fatherland' confidently combine
theories of Marx, Lenin, Bolívar, the Bible and the indigenous variants
such as the Pachamama. And of course, still bowing to their Cuban
political manager.
After Castro was on the threshold of death in 2006, his brother, General
Raul Castro, took the reins of power and further paved the way to Rome.
When the a political prisoner Orlando Zapata died on February 23, 2010,
as a result of a prolonged hunger strike, and the civilized world
launched a major campaign against the regime in Havana, due to excessive
repression against opponents and the Ladies in White, Castro II knew
immediately who to call.
And he called Cardinal Jaime Ortega. Born in Matanzas in 1936, Ortega
had personally suffered ill-treatment from the olive-green government in
the 1960's, when he was confined to a labor camp.
The Cardinal would become key political chess piece for the Castro
brothers. He was the partner par excellence between government, the
militant Ladies in White and the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel
Moratinos. The talks allowed the release of dissidents who had remained
behind bars since the crackdown of March 2003.
The move brought the regime some political oxygen. Raul Castro did not
move his remaining chips. The other alternative would be to sit down and
talk face to face with the opposition. But in five decades, if someone
has been scorned and slighted by the autocratic government of Castro, it
has been internal dissent.
For various reasons, Jaime Ortega was the ideal type. Among others, for
being a Catholic, desirous of a national church with a starring role in
Cuban society.
To a few dissidents on the island, the Cardinal is a docile type, they
say he is a puppet handled by the Creole mandarins at will. Someday we
will know if Ortega is driven by the hope that the situation in Cuba
will lead to a democracy, or other pressures have led him to play a role
that some exiled opponents see as cowardly.
The icing on the cake in the General's strategy is to strengthen
dialogue with the Vatican. A method already used by his brother who
allowed the visit of John Paul II to Cuba in January 1998.
On 26 March, Pope Benedict XVI will arrive in Santiago de Cuba, where he
will honor the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, the Patroness of Cuba, to
mark the 400th anniversary of her appearance. On the afternoon of March
27 he will travel to Havana. The next morning, he will offer a Mass at
the Plaza of the Revolution. When he gets on the plane to Italy,
relations between the Vatican and the government of Raul Castro will
have been relaunched.
The Cuban regime knows that dealing with an ancient institution such as
the Holy See, a specialist in managing politics like the work of a
goldsmith, it will always face open or subtle criticism from analysts
and the media. But they have no choice.
The Cuban population, without the devotion of other Latin American
nations, began some time ago to start going back to church, without
dropping the practice of syncretic cults.
The strategy of the Castro brothers is the continuation of their
political legacy, but with a facelift in terms of the religious theme.
For the first time, the state allowed a pilgrimage of the Virgin of
Charity throughout the provinces. After 16 months and more than 28,000
kilometers and with broad participation of citizens, the pilgrimage
ended last December 30 in an outdoor mass in front of the Bay of Havana.
Today, relations with the Cuban Catholic Church and the Vatican have an
important place for the General and his comrades. It is in the cloisters
sponsored by the Catholic Church where there are pockets of tolerance
and democracy.
From a discussion with officials of the regime such as Alfredo Guevara,
a moderate communist in the style of Esteban Morales, and the dissident
economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, to the lecture with open questions by
the Jewish Cuban-American political scientist Arturo Lopez-Levy,
professor at the University of Denver — and according to informed
sources, the cousin of Luis Lopez Callejas, son-in-law and right hand of
General Raul Castro.
What intrigues local observers is whether the conspiracy with the Cuban
Catholic Church and the Vatican could lead to a democratic state of law.
Or is just a ploy to gain time and give a wider social space to
Catholicism in education and health, sectors facing hardships due to the
widespread economic crisis in the nation.
To forecast the future of Cuba is like diving into a pool without water.
Only that eternal conspirator Raul Castro knows what he's doing.
Although at this stage of the game, perhaps Cardinal Ortega has some
clues. Let's ask.
February 5 2012
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