This is the script of a presentation made by Fr. Alberto Reyes at “One year on from 11 July: Perspectives on Freedom of Religion or Belief and human rights in Cuba”, a parliamentary fringe event hosted by CSW and Outreach Aid to the Americas in London on 6 July 2022, during the International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief. On 11 July 2021, spontaneous and peaceful protests took place across Cuba, and the government responded with violence and mass arrests. Hundreds of peaceful protestors, including some religious leaders, were sentenced to years in prison. Since then, the government has adopted new laws which have been criticized by human rights organizations for containing language that would allow the government further restrict freedom of religion or belief and related rights on the island and crack down on independent civil society including religious groups. – The Editors
I come from a small island in the Caribbean, a tiny piece of the tropics with barely eleven million inhabitants. For this reason, I want to begin by thanking all those who today look at my land and say: “I want to do something for them.”
I recognize that it is understandable to look at the Cuban reality from the outside and say: “Why haven’t Cubans just freed themselves?”, “How is it possible that they all continue to support government initiatives?”
The Cuban reality is complex. The movement led by Fidel Castro knew how to masterfully embody the deepest desires for freedom and democracy of the Cuban people, and once that people made the triumph of the so-called “Revolution” possible, and Fidel Castro and his group had control of the country, the fiercest repression was unleashed against anyone who dared to oppose it. From the beginning, the Cuban people knew the harshness of what is today the longest dictatorship in the history of the American continent. Arrests, prison, summary trials, executions… were the beginning of the proud Cuban Revolution.
And along with the initial disappointment came fear, and mass migration, which continues to this day.
But the Revolution not only looked inside the island with its controlling eyes, but also knew how to look outside, and capture the desire for freedom and plenitude of the world in crisis of the 1960s and knew how to become a hypnotic flag of the desire of a better world. And it generated a worldwide spell that remains today.
And so, between the iron control of an increasingly invasive system and a world that surrendered to the fascinating image of the new “liberators”, hope died in Cuba and, little by little, a profound process of defenselessness set in. Cuba became a big jail where, if you misbehaved, they put you in a smaller jail. And when you’re in jail, reality boils down to two words: survive or escape.
July 11 was the expression of a cry repressed for 63 years, it was certainly a claim for internal freedom, but it was also a cry to that world that does not understand that Cuba is not the paradise that they have been sold, nor does it understand what difficult it is to break chains that have been coiling around the throats of Cubans for 63 years.
And now, will things change in Cuba?
The answer is yes, definitely yes, but that yes will not necessarily be immediate. For now, Cuba continues and will continue to be a prison. The brutal repression unleashed and maintained as of July 11 testifies to this, together with the strict control of social networks, the promulgation of the new criminal code, the increasingly frequent exiles, and the continuous harassment of those who dare to raise their voices.
Cuba will continue to be a prison because those who govern it have not only become addicted to power, but to the type of power that dictatorships give: power with impunity, power that allows you to play God and live above the ten commandments, power not only absolute but also unquestionable. That power is not only given by money. The obstinacy of the Cuban government in power is not only a matter of money.
Cuba will continue to be a prison because those who really run the country have no reason to change, because at this moment, any change would imply a loss of power and impunity.
In this sense, there will be neither religious freedom, nor guarantee of human rights, nor mechanisms that facilitate the development of civil society, nor real programs for the promotion of the human being, because slaves are not promoted. The slaves are sought to please them, to give them what they want in doses that do not turn the balance in their favor. Slaves are sought out, some are even allowed to escape, but a slave can never be allowed to question who is in charge.
At the level of the people, the “glorious Revolution” of 1959 is today only an official myth, but a reality of fear and defenselessness of the people.
On the other hand, the Cuban system has had enough time to perfect its power mechanisms not only inside but also outside the island.
The regime has become an expert in playing the impudence card, and has learned to lie looking into the eyes, to promise what everyone knows they have no intention of fulfilling, insulting the reason and intelligence of their interlocutors, while looking at the eyes. And unfortunately, belligerent brazenness seems to have a paralyzing effect on those who become unable to react and end up playing their game.
And this without entering into a reality that I do not know but that my mind invites me to consider: blackmail and perks, because living in a free and democratic world does not automatically make you honest and true, nor does it eliminate by decree the attractiveness of money. Someone said that “gifts buy even the gods”, and I add: “and blackmail manages even the gods”.
And it is that I do not understand how it is possible that, many times, from the highest podiums of world power, we are looked at with so much useless pity, that pity that does nothing effective so that realities change, while, on the contrary, it underpins again and again and in a thousand possible ways those who, two minutes before, have been officially condemned.
However, I believe that today in Cuba the verses of another islander, Oscar Wilde, who said: “We are all in the sewer, but some of us look at the stars,” become a reality in Cuba. Today there are many, many of us who from our sewers made of fear and misery, look at the stars, and we deeply believe that the night is not eternal, and that a different Cuba is possible. Today there are many of us who push the wall day by day, dreaming, longing, hoping that one day the wall, apparently immovable, will fall, and Cuba will stop being a prison with bars of water.
Today, it seems that change is just a dream, but more and more the people of my town speak, express themselves, shout, confront; more and more the germ of freedom manifests itself in daily life. The certainty grows more and more that the so-called “Revolution” no longer has anything to offer and no longer has the real support of the people. And the government knows it, and is afraid, and for this reason, like the wounded beast, it debates hyper vigilantly, trying to make its pretended immortality credible.
Cuba belongs to all Cubans, to those of us who live in it today and to those who live abroad, but Cuba does not belong only to Cubans, because it has always been the land of welcome, of hosting. And I dream of a Cuba converted into the Bethany of the world. Bethany was the place where Jesus felt good, and I dream of a Cuba where everyone can find their Bethany, where everyone who arrives feels good.
I dream of a Cuba that can, from freedom, be prosperous; that it ceases to be a miserable and begging island and is capable of more than compensating for all the help it has received over the years.
For this reason, I ask every person of good will, as far as possible, to tell us: “count on me”, so that together, from all angles, we push the wall, because walls are not immovable and, one day, even to the amazement of many, end up falling forever.
To those who today have power and influence in their hands, I ask for coherence, I ask for the necessary freedom to defend justice and truth or, at least, the courage to remain silent, not to support the slow agony of a people that already “has received a double ration for his sins.”
I ask for support for civil society, for all those who today, from our small trenches, are working for a better Cuba for all, also for those who oppress us.
And I ask for prayer. Because we already tried to exclude God from our story, and it didn’t work. Many years ago, my people turned their back on God, and when people turn their back on God, they cannot walk. Not in vain did Saint Augustine wrote: “When one flees from God, everything flees from one”. We fled from God, we banished God, we turned our backs on God, and today we are a people submerged in the night.
It is true that Cuba has many needs, material, and non-material, but our greatest need today is to have the courage to turn our faces to God, because building a new Cuba without God would be nothing more than a different path to a different dictatorship.
Today I thank all that many of you have done and are doing for my land, and I humbly ask you not to stop helping us “push the wall”, but above all, I ask you to pray, not only for my land to return to be free, but for that freedom to grow by turning our face to God.
