Cautious Defiance: The Cuban Church's role in the release of political prisoners | A special report by Daniel Allott for Catholic World Report
One day last March, the Ladies in White—a group of wives, mothers, and other female relatives of Cuban political prisoners—prepared to march from St. Rita of Cascia Church in Havana to a nearby park. The Ladies, who wear white as a symbol of peace, had made that walk every week since 2003.
In March of that year, Cuban government agents arrested and imprisoned 75 journalists and human rights and democracy activists in a crackdown on nonviolent political dissent that became known as Cuba’s Black Spring. The Cuban government had rarely interrupted the Ladies’ peaceful protests. (My brother, doing research in Cuba for a documentary, observed one of the marches in Havana two years ago, and saw that several policemen were present but didn’t intrude, even when he began recording the march with a hand-held video camera.)
This time, however, the Ladies were besieged by a group of government security agents, who blocked their procession, shouting insults and threats. Several women were detained and assaulted. Then, hundreds of pro-government protestors surrounded the group and engaged in what the Cuban government calls “acts of repudiation”—verbal taunts, chants, and threats.
Over the next several weeks, similar scenarios played out during the Ladies’ peaceful protests. It quickly became clear that the government was attempting to put an end to the marches.
The government’s intimidation tactics prompted the archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, to send a letter to Cuban President Raúl Castro protesting the abuse and stating that “for the Church to tolerate this in silence would be an act of cowardice.” Cardinal Ortega, Havana’s archbishop since 1981, had sent many letters over the years to Fidel and Raúl Castro asking for meetings to express the Church’s concern over the treatment of political prisoners and other dissidents on the island. But something novel happened when Cardinal Ortega sent the letter this time: he got a response.
In May, Raúl Castro, who has headed the Cuban government since 2008, met with Cardinal Ortega and Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez, president of the Cuban bishops’ conference. Castro agreed to stop harassing the Ladies. He also agreed to move 12 political prisoners to prisons closer to their homes so as to make it easier for their families to visit them. (The government typically holds its political enemies in prisons as far away from their families as possible.)
Ortega and Castro met three more times over the next few weeks for talks that Ortega later described as “unprecedented.” With help from the Vatican and the Spanish government, on July 7 Ortega negotiated the release of the remaining 52 Black Spring prisoners, most of whom had been sentenced to decades-long prison terms. As of mid-October, the government had released 42 prisoners, and was promising to release the remaining prisoners by mid-November.
The Catholic Church has sometimes been criticized for not being outspoken enough about Cuba’s political prisoners. It has historically chosen engagement with the Castro regime over outright repudiation. But the Church’s cautious defiance has permitted it to play the crucial role of mediator in negotiating the current prisoner releases. While the prisoner releases are a result of a specific set of economic and political events and circumstances in Cuba, it is unlikely that they would be happening without the involvement of the Church.
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