"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Showing posts with label Christian Liberation Movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian Liberation Movement. Show all posts
38th Anniversary of the Christian Liberation Movement
On this September 8th, marking 38 years since the founding of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) by Oswaldo Payá and a group of Cubans committed to freedom, we reaffirm our fidelity to the principles that gave rise to our Movement: human dignity, freedom, reconciliation, and popular sovereignty.
Cuba is undergoing a profound economic, social, and political crisis, while the absence of fundamental freedoms, repression, and the imprisonment of Cubans for exercising their inherent rights persist.
Faced with this reality, we reaffirm that the solution for Cuba must lie in the hands of the Cuban people. Any pressure, initiative, or action by the international community regarding Cuba must aim to help restore sovereignty to its rightful holder—the Cuban people—and never to supplant their will or make decisions on their behalf.
We demand the recognition and full exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms, as well as the opening of a democratic process leading to free, pluralistic, and transparent elections, so that Cubans themselves may choose their leaders and sovereignly decide the political, economic, and social system in which they wish to live.
To our members and supporters on the Island who have kept the flame alive while under siege: you are the heart of the MCL. To those in exile: Cuba needs you, your experience, and your undiminished love. To the young people who were not present at the founding: this is your home too; this struggle belongs to you.
Thirty-eight years later, our aspiration remains intact: freedom, justice, reconciliation, popular sovereignty, and a Cuba belonging to all and for the benefit of all.
All Cubans, all brothers, and now—freedom!
Freedom and Life!
Tony Diaz, Secretary General
Minervo Chil, Executive Secretariat
Eduardo Cardet, National Coordinator
Eliecer Porto, Coordinating Council
Ramón Antunez, Founder
Yadelis Melchor, Executive Secretariat
Santiago Cárdenas, Founder
Carlos Paya, Executive Secretariat
Jose Miguel Martinez, Coordinating Council
Michel Céspedes, Executive Secretariat
Fernando Avedo, Founder
Iran Almaguer, Coordinating Council
Ernesto Martini, Coordinating Council
Manuel Robles, Executive Secretariat
Osmel Rodriguez, Executive Secretariat
Rosa Rodriguez, Coordinating Council
Jesús Mustafa, Executive Secretariat
Dagoberto Capote, Founder
Ariel Colmenero, Coordinating Council
Regis Iglesias, Spokesperson
Christian Liberation Movement
September 8, 2026
Celebration of the Virgin of Charity, Mother of the Cuban people.
XXXVIII Aniversario del Movimiento Cristiano Liberación
Este 8 de septiembre, al cumplirse 38 años de la fundación del Movimiento Cristiano Liberación por Oswaldo Payá y un grupo de cubanos comprometidos con la libertad, reafirmamos nuestra fidelidad a los principios que dieron origen a nuestro Movimiento: la dignidad de la persona, la libertad, la reconciliación y la soberanía popular.
Cuba atraviesa una profunda crisis económica, social y política, mientras persisten la ausencia de libertades fundamentales, la represión y el encarcelamiento de cubanos por ejercer derechos que les pertenecen.
Ante esta realidad, reafirmamos que la solución de Cuba debe estar en manos del pueblo cubano.
Toda presión, iniciativa o acción de la comunidad internacional respecto a Cuba debe tener como propósito contribuir a que la soberanía sea devuelta a su legítimo titular: el pueblo cubano, y nunca sustituir su voluntad ni decidir por él.
Demandamos el reconocimiento y ejercicio pleno de los derechos y libertades fundamentales y la apertura de un proceso democrático que conduzca a elecciones libres, plurales y transparentes, para que sean los cubanos quienes elijan a sus gobernantes y decidan soberanamente el sistema político, económico y social en el que desean vivir.
A nuestros miembros y simpatizantes dentro de la Isla, que han mantenido la llama encendida bajo asedio: ustedes son el corazón del MCL. A los exiliados: Cuba los necesita con su experiencia y su amor intacto. A los jóvenes que no conocieron la fundación: esta es también su casa, esta lucha es suya.
Treinta y ocho años después, nuestra aspiración permanece intacta: libertad, justicia, reconciliación, soberanía popular y una Cuba de todos y para todos.
Todos cubanos, todos hermanos y ahora la libertad!
Libertad y Vida!
Tony Diaz, Secretario General
Minervo Chil, Secretariado Ejecutivo
Eduardo Cardet, Coordinador Nacional
Eliecer Porto, Consejo Coordinador
Ramón Antunez, Fundador
Yadelis Melchor, Secretariado Ejecutivo
Santiago Cárdenas, Fundador
Carlos Paya, Secretariado Ejecutivo
Jose Miguel Martinez, Consejo Coordinador
Michel Céspedes, Secretariado Ejecutivo
Fernando Avedo, Fundador
Iran Almaguer, Consejo Coordinador.
Ernesto Martini, Consejo Coordinador.
Manuel Robles, Secretariado Ejecutivo
Osmel Rodriguez, Secretariado Ejecutivo.
Rosa Rodriguez, Consejo Coordinador
Jesús Mustafa, Secretariado Ejecutivo
Dagoberto Capote, Fundador
Ariel Colmenero, Consejo Coordinador
Regis Iglesias, Portavoz
Movimiento Cristiano Liberación
8 de septiembre de 2026
Celebración de la Virgen de la Caridad, Madre de los cubanos.
"Whoever destroys a
single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole
world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to
have saved the whole world." - Mishnah 1135
Harold was a member of the Christian Liberation Movement and a youth leader.
Harold
understood that those who engaged in repression were also not free
stating: "Those who remove and crush freedom are the real slaves."
Today would have been his 45th birthday, but due to the actions of the Castro regime's secret police his life was ended 14 years ago at the age of 32.
Clare Short, a former Labor member of parliament addressing the topic of forgiveness and justice raises two important points that underline reconciliation within an ongoing injustice and repression:
"Is
anger about injustice one of the forces that drives historical progress
and important social reform? Is there an important difference between
the bitterness,hatred and quest for vengeance that can be so damaging to
those who have been hurt or wronged, and the anger that thirsts after
justice?" ... "I also agree that the quest for vengeance is also wrong
because it so often inflicts harm on people who share an identity with
the original perpetrator but have no guilt,and it means the evil of the
original harm is recreated in the actions of the person who has been
wronged. But all this said, there is such a thing as just anger and
those who are subject to continuing oppression can get strength from
that anger in order to join with others to liberate themselves. And so I
wish to conclude by celebrating forgiveness and reconciliation but also by reminding us that reconciliation can not be the answer when there is a continuing wrong or continuing oppression."
In
the Cuban context, Antonio "Tony" Ramón Díaz Sánchez, a former prisoner
of conscience and secretary general of the Christian Liberation
Movement, rejects hatred while at the same time forgiving past injustices but refuses to forgive those that are ongoing or that will be carried out in the future.
"Because what I do not forgive is that the year has started with the same repression
that ended last year. What I can not forgive is that in my country,
those who govern, do not recognize the need to change to democracy and
allow the people to decide in free and pluralistic elections. I can not
and do not want to forgive that right now, at this instant, there are political prisoners in Cuba
and that the existing laws guarantee their imprisonment or perhaps the
firing squad for others. I do not forgive that young people are living
without life projects, while a group in power live as billionaires. Nor do I forgive the complicity of many interests that seek capital
now in Cuba without wanting to find out today what is happening there. I
do not forgive out of hate. No, no but because forgiving a present and a
future of injustice and totalitarianism for your country, is not mercy
but complicity with the evil of others."
The
perils of speaking truth to power in Cuba were and still are understood
by Tony Díaz Sánchez. Long years in prison and forced exile were the
price he paid.
Harold also understood the dangers
of advocating for freedom in Cuba under the Castro dictatorship. In
2012, shortly before his death he explained the cost of resistance.
"Christians
and non-Christians who have the courage and the freedom to consider the
peaceful political option for their lives, know they are exposing
themselves to slightly less than absolute solitude, to work exclusion,
to persecution, to prison or death."
Defending memory by pursuing truth
and maintaining the call for justice is an ever present opportunity for
the other to repent and embrace justice and actual forgiveness. The
antithesis of this is "forgiving and forgetting" while injustices are
ongoing and new ones being compounded not only harms the victims but
also condemns the perpetrator to continue committing evil acts and is
described as a "false reconciliation."
In the spirit of defending truth and memory, this video of a 2002 interview with Harold Cepero provided by the Christian Liberation Movement on their Youtube channel is being shared.
Since 1959 She has accompanied the Cuban diaspora.
The Virgin of Charity has remained a powerful force in Cuba over the past 65 years, despite efforts to impose atheism.
Jesús Mustafá Felipe at Solemn Mass for Our Lady of Charity
37 years ago on September 8, 1988, the Feast Day for Cuba's Our Lady Charity, a handful of Cubans, lay Catholics, consisting
of Oswaldo Payá, Ramón Antúnez, Dagoberto Capote, Santiago Cárdenas and
Fernando Arvelo, inspired by their faith, the strength of their ideals
and love for their country, founded the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), to work for the recovery of popular sovereignty and national reconciliation in Cuba.
"Liberation
is our purpose, liberation carried out by the people, who will not be a
spectator of the moment in which their destiny is decided. We do not call all against each other, but all for a new Cuba. We reject violence, offense, lies and destruction as means of struggle. We do not believe that the end justifies the means. Our goal is to achieve freedom, justice and this is achieved only moved by love. Freedom is true only if it emanates from love. "
Since then, many Cubans joined the Christian Liberation Movement and given their best for their homeland. Some are no longer physically here, and some of them were murdered by the dictatorship.
37° aniversario de la fundación del Movimiento Cristiano Liberación 8 de septiembre de 1988 pic.twitter.com/ucn8OKS98X
“When our first child was going to be born, we have three children, we
said that our children cannot live in a country without liberty and we
are not going to another country to seek freedom. Therefore we have to
fight for our children to live free here in Cuba and everyone else's
children and their parents too.”
Oswaldo José was born on February 17, 1988 and the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) was founded that same year on September 8, 1988. Oswaldo Payá was killed on July 22, 2012 along with the movement's youth leader Harold Cepero.
Priests were taken at gun point and forced out of Cuba in 1961
This is not what was promised by the revolutionaries when they took power in Cuba. Fidel Castro on January 11, 1959 went on Face the Nation and promised free, multiparty elections within 18 months. Richard Bate of CBS News pressed the Cuban dictator.
Richard Bate:
Dr. Castro you said that in 18 months or so there will be free
elections in Cuba. When this time comes will all political parties be
able to run candidates in these elections?
Fidel Castro: Yes, of course
Richard Bate: All political parties including the Directorio?
Fidel Castro:
Of course, if we don't give free to all the political parties to
organize we are not a democratic country. We have fought for the
democracy here, and for the free ... for the the freedom of our people. We don't want to stop and to put any difficulties to anybody. We believe in democracy.
Richard Bate: Why would it be necessary to wait 18 months before free elections to be held?
Fidel Castro:
Well, do you think it is good for the Cubans When all the people want
peace. When all the people is that the government repair the mistakes
and the barbarity of the before government. Don't you believe that our
country at least one year to work? Do you believe that between... in the
fight of the political parties is it possible to do anything? If we
give a free election tomorrow we win because we have almost all the
people ...
In Matthew 7:15-7:16 the
Gospel states "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's
clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their
fruits." From the very beginning, truth has often been a casualty of
the communist regime in Cuba.
Father Miguel Angel Loredo (1998)
Father Miguel Angel Loredo was a prisoner of conscience of the Castro
dictatorship because he refused to go along with the lies of the
regime. Father Loredo understood that one of the most formidable weapons
against injustice is objective truth, and here he explained why.
"I believe we should denounce the evils of both the right and the left.
I find selective denunciation, that has political roots repugnant. If
you believe in the integrity of the human being you must believe deeply
in objective denunciation. Without objectivity, there is no hope."
The concept of nonviolent civil resistance is introduced into the
history of Cuba. Take the truth as a weapon, placing it in practice in
the civic field, what Scripture proposed in the spiritual realm: "the
truth shall make you free". Hence its importance at that time and its
transcendence for the future of Cuba.
If the truth shall make you free then what does the lie offer? The Ochoa
case offers a dramatic answer. In June of 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa
is arrested.
He had been declared a “Hero of the Revolution” by Fidel
Castro in 1984 but by 1989 was deemed too dangerous by Castro because
he feared that General Ochoa had been contaminated by the ideas of Glasnost and Perestroika while
visiting the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era.
He was also popular
within the ranks of the military due to his exploits in Africa. General Ochoa was accused of conspiracy and
treason. He was also tied to drug smuggling and corruption. Ochoa was approached by Fidel Castro with the offer that if he confessed to everything he had been accused of and did not mount a vigorous defense that he could go home into retirement.
Father José Conrado and Father Juan Lázaro Vélez officiate at Mass for Matanzas victims
During a special mass for the victims of the Matanzas oil fire in Miami on September 6, 2022, Father Conrado acknowledged that "although we are far
from the Homeland, those of us who left to find freedom, also feel and
suffer for Cuba, because the Homeland belongs to everyone" paraphrasing
José Martí, the apostle of Cuban independence. Father Conrado issued a
call in the name of Jesus and the Virgin "so that we Cubans break the
spell of evil that has taken over the island" and for this he called for
the unity of all Cubans, "those of the two shores”.
On September 7th, at 5:00 pm, Christian Liberation Movement members met at 800 West 29th Street, Hialeah, where they presented a wreath at the monument erected in memory of Oswaldo Paya and commemorate the 37th anniversary of the founding of the Christian Liberation Movement, to which he dedicated his life.
Christian Liberation Movement members in Hialeah on September 7th.
Today is a also good day to rememberVáclav Havel's hopeful call: "May truth and love triumph over lies and hatred."
"The solution to the Cuban problem lies with the Cubans, and that's why we created the Varela Project." - Oswaldo Payá , Havana, February 2012
Oswaldo Payá, Regis Iglesias, and Antonio Diaz, turn in petitions
Twenty three years ago today on May 10, 2002, carrying 11,020 signed petitions in
support of the Varela Project, the Christian Liberation Movement's Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas,
Antonio Diaz Sanchez, and Regis Iglesias Ramirez delivered them to the Cuban
National Assembly.
Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, in his 1999 novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting observed
that "the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory
against forgetting." Memory provides context to unfolding events today,
and helps to render informed judgements.
This blog entry is an exercise in preserving memory.
The Varela Project, named after the Cuban Catholic Priest Felix Varela, sought to reform the Cuban legal system
to bring it in line with international human rights standards. They had
followed the letter of the law in organizing the campaign. They specifically asked for the following in the petition.
Guarantee
the right to free expression and free association that guarantee
pluralism, opening Cuban society to political debate and facilitating a
more participatory democracy.
Amnesty for all those imprisoned for political reasons.
Right of Cubans to form companies, both individually owned and in cooperatives.
Proposal
for a new electoral law that truly guarantees the right to elect and be
elected to all Cubans and the holding of free elections
President James Carter at the University of Havana.
Former President James Carter visited Cuba in May 2002 and on May 15th gave a speech at the University of Havana, where he advocated for the lifting of economic sanctions on Cuba and "called for the Varela Project petition to be published in the official newspaper so that people could learn about it."
The Varela Project was not presented for debate before the National
Assembly, which according to then existing law drafted by the Cuban government meant that it should have been deliberated in that legislative
body.
Less than a year after the petitions were turned in, starting on March 18, 2003 the Cuban Spring would end with a massive crackdown on Cuban civil society with many of the Project Varela organizers, imprisoned and summarily sentenced up to 28 years in prison.
The 75 activists with long prison sentences became known as the "group of the 75."
The Castro regime announced, at the time, that the Cuban dissident movement had been destroyed.
They spoke prematurely.
First, the remaining activists who were still free continued gathering signatures and would turn in another 14,384 petition signatures on October 5, 2003, and they continued to gather more.
Secondly, the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the activists who had been detained and imprisoned organized themselves into the "Ladies in White." A movement that sought the freedom of their loved ones and organized regular marches through the streets of Cuba, despite regime organized violence visited upon them. This new movement was led by Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, a former school teacher.
Antonio Diaz Sanchez and Regis Iglesias Ramirez were released from
prison into forced exile in 2010.
President Carter made a second trip to Cuba in March 2011, and did not publicly mention Project Varela during that visit, but instead focused efforts on trading Alan Gross for the remaining members of the WASP network jailed in the United States on charges of espionage, and murder conspiracy that killed three Americans and a US resident in 1996, and calling for the lifting of economic sanctions on the Castro regime. President Carter also downplayed the threat of FARC, ETA, and ELN terrorists harbored in Cuba.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was killed on July 22, 2012 together with Harold Cepero, a youth leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, in a car "accident" that all the hallmarks of a state security operation copied after the East German Stasi, who trained intelligence operatives in the Castro regime.
Revisiting and remembering these historic moments is part of the struggle against forgetting, and the conversation that it may arouse will only serve, when backed up with facts, to strengthen memory with
truth. Memory, and retentiveness are defenses against the Castro regime's totalitarian rewriting of history.
Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in a July 14, 2003 opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times provided context to the aftermath of Project Varela, and the March 18, 2003 crackdown in which 75 Cuban dissidents, many of them organizers of the petition drive were sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years.
"Cuba finds itself in a grave crisis. In the last few years,
thousands of its citizens have participated in what’s known as the
Varela Project, overcoming a culture of fear and calling for a national
referendum on civil rights, the peaceful evolution of freedom and
reconciliation. But now a cloud of terror hangs over that quest for
change."
This analysis remains relevant today.
In 2023 Antonio Diaz Sanchez, Regis Iglesias Ramirez and other members of the Christian Liberation Movement reflected on the significance of the Varela Project.
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