“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” – Martin Luther King Jr.,
From CubaBrief
Two leaders of the Council of Churches of Cuba are denouncing a young Cuban dissident who organized a humanitarian aid drive and are refusing to accept the assistance. Reverend Joel Ortega Dopico, Executive Secretary and Rev Antonio Santana Hernández, president of the Council of Churches of Cuba have criticized the efforts of Rosa María Payá to get much needed humanitarian assistance to Cubans on the island. Only problem is that the aid was not theirs to reject.
The Pan American Foundation for Democracy, in coordination with the City of Miami, called on all Cuban residents of South Florida and the U.S. to send donations to provide humanitarian assistance to Cuba, which is in the midst of a crisis of shortages in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Humanitarian aid was collected on Saturday, May 16, at the Mana Wynwood Convention Center and the containers filled with assistance reached the Port of Mariel in Cuba. Now the Castro regime is blocking the delivery of the aid.
The Castro regime in Cuba was an atheist dictatorship openly hostile to religion until their Communist Party Fourth Congress in 1991 when religious belief was declared to no longer be an obstacle to membership in the officialist party. The hostility remains but it is now more covert.
This "opening" led Pablo Odén Marichal, then president of the Cuban Council of Churches (Consejo Cubano de Iglesias), who was also a deputy in Cuba's National Assembly to become a Communist Party member. Baptist Minister Raúl Suárez Ramos, with the Cuban Council of Churches, who was also a deputy in Cuba's National Assembly, joined the Communist Party. Human Rights Watch reported in their 1999 report Cuba's Repressive Machinery that "Suárez Ramos earned government acclaim in 1990 when he lauded the revolution as "a blessing for our poor people" and criticized U.S. policy toward Cuba as an "economic, political, radio, and television aggression."
The leaders of the Council of Churches of Cuba parrot the official government line and are rewarded with both benefits and privileges denied to others. Their response attacking Rosa Maria is simply doing the Castro regime's bidding.
Meanwhile, those who do not follow the government line and engage in "subversive acts" such as Father Patrick Sullivan who "posted copies of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in his church and had urged his parishioners to defend those rights" was pressured by the Cuban government into leaving Cuba in April 1988, continue to suffer similar or worse consequences.
Second, this is not the first time that the Castro regime has denied badly needed humanitarian aid sent by the Cuban exile community. Eight months after the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, following Hurricane Lili's devastating impact on Cuba the United States government in October 1996 waived a then existing ban on direct flights from Cuba for a Catholic Church charity to send a planeload of aid to help victims of the hurricane.
Ulises Cabrera in an article published by Cubanet on October 23, 1996 described the grim situation on the island."To the hundreds of thousands of homeless Cubans now there's a fresh crop. Hunger worsens by the day. The sugar industry and the rest of the economy will have even worse results. The government has informed us that they have used up the State's reserves for emergencies, therefore we will be subjected to even greater misery amidst the misery, and even the faint hope that some fools clung to, will vanish."
30 tons of assistance arrived in Cuba, but were held by regime officials for over a week and not sent to impacted areas. On November 2, 1996 the Cuban dictatorship said that it "was not accepting part of a planeload of food aid for victims of Hurricane Lili sent by Cuban-Americans because packages had been adorned with political, ''counter-revolutionary'' slogans."
According to then Father Thomas Wenski, "some packages were adorned with messages such as ''exile'' and 'love can do everything.' Wenski reiterated on Saturday that the donors had not meant any harm by putting such lettering on the packages."
Now in 2020, leaders of the Council of Churches of Cuba echo the positions of the Castro regime, but other religious leaders such as Pastor Alayn Toledano and Pastora Maria Cristina Rodriguez Penton are bravely speaking out that the aid is needed and wanted by Cubans. This is a courageous position because independent religious spaces and practices continue to be targeted by the dictatorship.
In desperation, the Castro regime's official website CubaDebate warns that humanitarian aid "could have bombs," in an effort to spin what is becoming a public relations debacle for the dictatorship. Cuban rapper and dissident Maykel Castillo was detained for four hours by the secret police and received veiled threats for having called for the release of the aid to help Cuban families in need.
Time for the Castro regime to get out of the way for Cubans to help each other at this time of crisis and great need.
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| Rosa María Payá led effort to gather humanitarian aid for Cubans on the island. |
Two leaders of the Council of Churches of Cuba are denouncing a young Cuban dissident who organized a humanitarian aid drive and are refusing to accept the assistance. Reverend Joel Ortega Dopico, Executive Secretary and Rev Antonio Santana Hernández, president of the Council of Churches of Cuba have criticized the efforts of Rosa María Payá to get much needed humanitarian assistance to Cubans on the island. Only problem is that the aid was not theirs to reject.
The Pan American Foundation for Democracy, in coordination with the City of Miami, called on all Cuban residents of South Florida and the U.S. to send donations to provide humanitarian assistance to Cuba, which is in the midst of a crisis of shortages in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Humanitarian aid was collected on Saturday, May 16, at the Mana Wynwood Convention Center and the containers filled with assistance reached the Port of Mariel in Cuba. Now the Castro regime is blocking the delivery of the aid.
The Castro regime in Cuba was an atheist dictatorship openly hostile to religion until their Communist Party Fourth Congress in 1991 when religious belief was declared to no longer be an obstacle to membership in the officialist party. The hostility remains but it is now more covert.
This "opening" led Pablo Odén Marichal, then president of the Cuban Council of Churches (Consejo Cubano de Iglesias), who was also a deputy in Cuba's National Assembly to become a Communist Party member. Baptist Minister Raúl Suárez Ramos, with the Cuban Council of Churches, who was also a deputy in Cuba's National Assembly, joined the Communist Party. Human Rights Watch reported in their 1999 report Cuba's Repressive Machinery that "Suárez Ramos earned government acclaim in 1990 when he lauded the revolution as "a blessing for our poor people" and criticized U.S. policy toward Cuba as an "economic, political, radio, and television aggression."
T @RosaMariaPaya,coordinator of #CubaDecide, responded that "the #help does not belong to Reverend Santana and Dopico. The president and secretary of the #CouncilofChurches have nothing to reject because the #humanitarian aid was not sent to them." https://t.co/V1EHmLbJLj— Center for Free Cuba (@cubacenter) August 19, 2020
The leaders of the Council of Churches of Cuba parrot the official government line and are rewarded with both benefits and privileges denied to others. Their response attacking Rosa Maria is simply doing the Castro regime's bidding.
Meanwhile, those who do not follow the government line and engage in "subversive acts" such as Father Patrick Sullivan who "posted copies of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in his church and had urged his parishioners to defend those rights" was pressured by the Cuban government into leaving Cuba in April 1988, continue to suffer similar or worse consequences.
 |
| In May, despite the pandemic the diaspora gave time and treasure for Cubans in the island |
Ulises Cabrera in an article published by Cubanet on October 23, 1996 described the grim situation on the island."To the hundreds of thousands of homeless Cubans now there's a fresh crop. Hunger worsens by the day. The sugar industry and the rest of the economy will have even worse results. The government has informed us that they have used up the State's reserves for emergencies, therefore we will be subjected to even greater misery amidst the misery, and even the faint hope that some fools clung to, will vanish."
30 tons of assistance arrived in Cuba, but were held by regime officials for over a week and not sent to impacted areas. On November 2, 1996 the Cuban dictatorship said that it "was not accepting part of a planeload of food aid for victims of Hurricane Lili sent by Cuban-Americans because packages had been adorned with political, ''counter-revolutionary'' slogans."
According to then Father Thomas Wenski, "some packages were adorned with messages such as ''exile'' and 'love can do everything.' Wenski reiterated on Saturday that the donors had not meant any harm by putting such lettering on the packages."
Now in 2020, leaders of the Council of Churches of Cuba echo the positions of the Castro regime, but other religious leaders such as Pastor Alayn Toledano and Pastora Maria Cristina Rodriguez Penton are bravely speaking out that the aid is needed and wanted by Cubans. This is a courageous position because independent religious spaces and practices continue to be targeted by the dictatorship.
In desperation, the Castro regime's official website CubaDebate warns that humanitarian aid "could have bombs," in an effort to spin what is becoming a public relations debacle for the dictatorship. Cuban rapper and dissident Maykel Castillo was detained for four hours by the secret police and received veiled threats for having called for the release of the aid to help Cuban families in need.
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| Collection point for humanitarian assistance in May 2020. |
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