Religious freedoms in Cuba

[rug]

Havana. May 9, 2013
Dalia González Delgado

ANNUAL U.S. State Department reports refer to Cuba as one of the countries which obstructs the exercise of religious expression. While the latest State Department report, in reference to the country, states that government respect for religious freedoms has improved, it notes that significant restrictions have remained in place.

However, many specialists have noted the increase of religious expression in Cuban public life. The adoption into the Constitution of the secular nature of the state in 1992 facilitated religious freedoms, and two Popes and other eminent foreign religious leaders have since visited the country.

These lists, drawn up by the U.S. government in an arbitrarily and unilateral manner, standing in judgment over others but not itself, have political motivations, given that, in the case of Cuba, these can be used to justify its blockade.

With a view to presenting authoritative opinions, Granma interviewed a number of Cuban religious leaders.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/9mayo-19librelig.html

An interesting article from the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. She spoke with the Beth Shalom Temple, the Moravian Church, the Cuban Islamic League, and "The Martin Luther King Memorial Center (CMMLK), a Christian-inspired macro-ecumenical institution, as its members describe it."

[Jim__]

1. Given the source, I'd take the article with a grain of salt.

I have no idea of the amount of religious freedom that exists in Cuba; but the newspaper doesn't seem like a disinterested party.

[rug]

2. It is overtly a government newspaper but it does have some interesting information.

I had no idea there was a Moravian Church in Cuba. The Martin Luther King Memorial Center appears explicitly to be grounded in liberation theology. And now there's a Mennonite Church. http://www.mennonitechurch.ca/news/releases/2009/04/Release03.htm

Cuba, 50 years in, is a very interesting place. The current role of religion there is no less interesting.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. I went to Cuba with a church group in 2011

Not only the Moravians but also the Episcopalians, Quakers, and Salvation Army operate in Cuba. We visited the synagogue in Havana and heard from them that religious freedom has greatly increased since the 1990s, and we heard the same thing at the ecumenical Protestant seminary

Half of our group went and worked on a cooperative farm organized by the Episcopal church during the "special period."

During our stay, the presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church and a representative of the World Council of Churches came to Havana and spoke at an ecumenical meeting attended by representatives of all the Christian groups in Cuba.

During the time we were there, a medallion of la Virgen de la Caridad, sacred to both Catholics and to practitioners of Santería under another name, the African-derived religion of the Caribbena was touring the country. We drove past the church where the medallion was being exhibited, and there were crowds all around it.

People were practicing Santería openly, easily identified by their all-white clothing.

Just from what I've seen, there is probably more religious freedom in Cuba than in China right now.

[rug]

4. Yes, the Cuban government seems to be loosening its grip while China's is tightening its.

Thanks for the first-hand observations.

[struggle4progress]

5. Fidel and Religion: Castro Talks on Revolution and Religion With Frei Betto

Reviewed by Gaddis Smith
Fall 1987

A Dominican priest from Brazil reports on 23 hours of conversation with Fidel Castro, who now asserts that religion can be a stimulant as well as an opiate. A Marxist can be a Christian and a Christian can work with a Marxist government: "What is important in both cases is a question of sincere revolutionaries disposed to abolish the exploitation of man by man" ... `Harvey Cox, in his introduction, suggests that Castro picked up the style of Jesuit thinking but not the content.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/42413/gaddis-smith/fidel-and-religion-castro-talks-on-revolution-and-religion-with-

[rug]

6. Thanks for that review. Here's another.

According to Harvard theologian Harvey Cox in his excellent introduction, this book ""has already caused a near sensation"" throughout Europe, Latin America, and the Soviet bloc. The reason is this: for the first time ever, here a Communist leader affirms the compatability of religion and Marxist revolution. Castro's revisionist comments come during three lengthy 1985 conversations with Brazilian Dominican Frei Betto, a chief spokesman for ""liberation theology"" and an unabashed admirer of the Cuban leader. A too-long and breathless account by Betto of events leading up to the talks preface the conversations proper, which are presented in straight dialogue form. Although religion serves as the touchstone throughout the interchanges, Castro manages to soapbox his way into a multitude of subjects, from his early days fighting Batista's army to an explanation of Cuba's base economies, to the virtues of Che Guevara, to predictable attacks on US foreign policy. By dint of an extraordinary charisma that manages to seep even onto the printed page, most of what Castro says intrigues or even dazzles; less true of Betto, whose fawning towards the Cuban continually grates. Castro's specific comments on religion consist mostly of memories of a middle-class boyhood spent with a pious mother and Jesuit teachers; of grateful nods towards those Christians who worked for the revolutions in Cuba and Nicaragua; and of disclaimers that he holds any malice towards religion--including the attention-grabbing claim that there's no fundamental conflict between religion and Marxism, which, Castro asserts, share an identical goal: world brotherhood. An intriguing and useful book, but more for the insights it allows into Castro's supple mind than for its advertised content of a new affair between Marxism and religion, a marriage perhaps more easily proposed than consummated.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/fidel-frei-betto-castro/fidel-and-religion-castro-talks-on-revolution-a/

That conversation took place two years before the fall of the Wall and four years before the fall of the Soviet Union. I wonder what that conversation would be like today.