March 14, 2008
Eminence Cardinal Tarciso
Bertone
00120 Vatican City State, Europe
Your Eminence Cardinal
Tarcisio Bertone:
Our heartfelt appreciation for the trip you took to our dear land,
Cuba, on behalf of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. It is indeed a
source of pride and hope to see such a distinguished prelate of the
Church visiting our homeland.
The world is well aware that our people have suffered and are
suffering a great deal. Almost a half century of oppression and of
violations of the most fundamental rights of the human person in
Cuba, are not easy to bear. Almost a half century of exile makes our
hopes for our nation dwindle, and yet, we continue to believe in the
future of our country.
Your eminence, there is so
much that could be written. Thousands of men have died facing the
firing squad for the sole “crime” of opposing the regime. Many faced
the horrors of the execution shouting, “Hail Christ the King!”
Thousands of others, men, women and children have drowned in the
waters of the Straits of Florida seeking freedom. We know you can
imagine the desperation that makes a man risk his life and that of
his family in an attempt to cross more than 100 miles of ocean in a
flimsy, home-made craft. In the Spring of 2003 more than seventy men
of integrity were sentenced to long prison terms for daring to write
something – even minutia– criticizing the Castro regime. Some were
arrested only for creating a small library opened to the public and
not controlled by the Cuban government. Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet was
first sent to prison for publicly condemning the government’s
promotion of abortion clinics. Today, the Ladies in White (Las Damas
de Blanco) gather in the Catholic Church of Saint Rita to start
their weekly peregrinations in protest of those arrested so unjustly
in 2003. Each lady carries a white rose in their hands; the rose
that the apostle of Cuban independence, José Martí, called, “The
white rose of friendship”. Clearly there is no hatred in their
hearts, but love, Christian love and Christian motivation. Is it not
shameful that the same day that Cuban Chancellor Pérez-Roque was
signing the Human Rights Convention in the United Nations, Mr.
Guillermo Fariñas, was beaten in a Havana street by ministry of the
interior agents because he was distributing the very text of the
Convention that Pérez-Roque had signed earlier that day? The people
of Cuba, here in the diaspora and there, in that dear land, hope for
deliverance.
Would it not be possible for the Cuban Church to make an attempt at
visiting the prisoners of conscience in the Cuban jails? Could the
Church, in keeping with the words in Chapter 25 of Saint Matthew’s
Gospel, try to carry those prisoners Christ’s spiritual comfort? Of
course, the tyranny’s denial would surely follow, but, equally
surely, the Church would have been strengthened.
With all our faults, and we had many, Cuba was once a flourishing
nation. In 1958, Cuba had the highest per capita income (in U.S.
dollars) in Latin America. In that same year, the island produced
5.6 million tons of sugar, a figure that the Communist regime has
seldom been able to reach successfully and consistently. The Cuban
Communist government admits that currently Cubans abroad send to the
island more than one thousand million U.S. dollars annually. That’s
quite a few dollars of help! And yet, the regime likes to blame the
embargo for just about all Cuban maladies, but efficiency in sugar
production, proper soil conservation, competent transportation of
the sugar cane to the mills to avoid the plant from drying up, has
nothing to do with the embargo. In 1955, Cuba produced 467 million
pounds of beef (That was 76.4 pounds of beef annually per
inhabitant!). For decades, the revolution, in a gross
mismanagement of the cattle industry, has not even been able to put
beef in the market on a weekly basis for the people of Cuba. (All
the statistics in this paragraph can be found in U.N. and Cuban
sources.)
The embargo was the result
of the confiscation by the Communist regime of all U.S. properties
in Cuba without due compensation. Could we humbly suggest that
should the embargo be negotiated, the people in Cuba receive some
freedoms as a result? Would not an acceptable consequence be freedom
for the prisoners of conscience? Your Eminence, it is so easy to
blame others, in this case the U.S. embargo, for the dreadful
economic mismanagement of the Cuban economy by the corrupt Cuban
bureaucracy. Cuba does have commercial relations with the better
part of the world. There is no excuse for the exploitation, abuse,
terror, dearth and misery which the Cuban people are subjected to by
the privileged “rulers” in the Communist Party. Embargo or no
embargo, it’s the same story of failure, of corruption and evil that
the imperious Communism inflicted on Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Lithuania, etc. Cuba is in desperate need of a “Perestroika”, of a
“Glasnost”!
Wherever we are, Cubans look
up to our Catholic Church as the one institution that can be a
decisive factor in courageously contributing to a better tomorrow
for our land. All Cubans, in the island and abroad, are filled with
hopes, are filled with expectations and dreams of standing together
as brothers in Christ in a nation ruled by law and honoring human
rights and freedoms.
A dictum from Horace comes
to mind, “And once sent out, a word takes up wind beyond recall” (ET
semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum). Evoking the words of our
late Holy Father, John Paul II, when he told the Cuban people not to
be afraid, may your word, your eminence, speak of the yearns for
freedom of the people of Cuba.
God bless you and all the
tasks you pursue in service of Holy Mother Church.
Respectfully,
Francisco Pérez Lerena SJ
Superior of the Jesuits in Miami
