While Presidents Obama and Castro are treating Pope Francis’s first visit to Cuba like a diplomatic reaffirmation of US-Cuba ties, Cuban Americans see it quite differently than a chess move on the world stage. For us, it’s personal.
I was born in Cuba, and left with my family in 1961. My college-age sons, who are considering taking their junior year abroad in Cuba, wonder why this took so long. But for my parent’s generation, Obama’s reconciliation has been a bitter pill to swallow, and the pope’s role a betrayal, since most are devout Catholics. (Needless to say, they are also Republicans, with no love lost for the president.) For while Cuba and the US have re-established diplomatic relations, and Obama has eased travel restrictions there, Castro has done little in return, and the Cold War-era embargo remains firmly in place.
All of this was surely on the mind of Pope Francis – El Papa Francisco to Cubans – as he descended from an Alitalia jet onto the tarmac of Jose Marti International Airport. His zucchetto skullcap flew off in the wind, perhaps the only unscripted moment in the carefully stage-managed arrival, replete with telegenic young people and a goose-stepping honor guard. Castro’s soporific welcome condemned the embargo as “cruel, illegal, immoral and illegal”, and demanded the return of the US naval base in Guantánamo.
The pope didn’t indict the Cuban government in turn. In a subdued seven-minute speech, the visibly jet-lagged Pontiff, crucial to the re-establishment of US ties, thanked Raul as well as Fidel. He stressed the themes of peace and reconciliation, invoking José Marti, the iconic father of Cuban independence. If anything approached criticism, it was the pope’s remark that he spoke to all Cubans who could not be there, perhaps referring to exiles in Miami as well as dissidents on the island, and that Marti had opposed “dynasties”. But a Vatican spokesman quickly walked those comments back.
Francis is the third pope to visit Cuba, following John Paul in 1998 and Benedict in 2012. And while this is his first visit to Cuba, it has long been on his papal plate, so to speak. Francis wrote a book about John Paul’s visit in which he argued that the island nation needs a democratic rather than authoritarian leadership. But he hoped to accomplish this through dialogue, lauding John Paul’s appeal for Cuba to “open itself to the world, and for the world to open itself to Cuba.”
Conservative Cuban Americans gave stink-eye to the pope’s active involvement in negotiations between Obama and Castro. He not only sent each of them a personal letter of encouragement, but also hosted secret meetings within the walls of the Vatican. Having put his credibility on the line, he also has much riding on the success of the trip.
This includes efforts to increase the influence of the Church in Cuba. Much has changed since John Paul’s visit – Christmas and Good Friday are once again national holidays. Cuba remains the most restrictive place in Latin America for Catholics: for instance, the Church is not allowed to operate elementary and secondary schools. Francis would also like to obtain the return of confiscated church properties, such as Belen, the Jesuit high school where Fidel Castro was educated.
His religious efforts, too, get mixed reviews from Cuban Americans, who accuse the Church of accommodating a corrupt regime in service of its aims. Cuban Archbishop Jaime Ortega (who also welcomed John Paul and Benedict to Cuba) has been criticized for cozying up to the Castros and ignoring the plight of dissidents. Equally troubling to my parents is Raul’s unusually close relationship with the pope, which has encompassed multiple meetings between the two. In the early years of the Revolution, by contrast, Raul was his brother’s enforcer, an unflinching Marxist ideologue; recently he has become more pragmatic, and after meeting with the Pope said he might even rejoin the faith. Many Cuban exiles regard him as a war criminal and mass murderer.
While nearly 3,500 prisoners were released in honor of the pope’s visit, these were not political prisoners. Indeed, Cuba’s official position is that it has no political prisoners. But just last week, Cuban police detained 50 members of the predominantly Catholic dissident group Ladies in White.
So Francis may need to mend some fences in Miami and elsewhere. There was another veiled critique of the Castros during the open-air mass that took place the next morning at the vast Plaza de la Revolucion, with hundreds of thousands of worshippers in attendance. Frances noted, “Service in never ideological, for we don’t serve ideas, we serve people.” But more members of the Ladies in White were detained to keep them from attending the mass, and others were arrested trying to approach the Popemobile.
Afterwards, Francis spoke briefly with the aging Fidel, though it was in the presence of several family members at his home, hardly an occasion for tough talk. There are no plans to meet with any dissidents during the remainder of the trip. But this pope is nothing if not unpredictable, and Cuban Americans will be watching – and we want the pope to hold the Castros accountable.
Source: The Guardian
