Reflections

A Cuba Reflection: The November 2009 Visits

Written by John Walter Wednesday, 10 March 2010 21:55

A Cuba Reflection: 1999 ~2009

John Walter ~ November 2-23, 2009 / Calabazar de Sagua

The visits to: Cabaiguán, Placetas, Sagua la Grande, Calabazar de Sagua and Encrucijada.

You’d think that after ten years of visiting and relationship building with the Iglesia Presbiteriana Reformada en Cuba (IPRC) I’d have devised some kind of method for evaluating my experiences and have reached some broad conclusions; but in fact I think just the opposite is true. I’m still collecting impressions, but now in both a wider geographical and contextual area.

The truth is, is that no North American will ever be able to conclusively evaluate this culture, its successes and its chronic problems; but in the presence of trusted Cuban friends, I have spent a good deal of time around the dinner table listening to varied generational perspectives and have been able to piece together a matrix of reality- based impressions that allow me to begin assembling a report concerning the primary forces acting upon the church in Cuba.

So, the best I can offer is a kind of sequential set of experiences, composed of, or ending in mostly questions; seeking answers and hoping that at the end there will be some consistent body of understanding that merits the time and resources required to having undertaken this ministry.

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I always find myself looking up in Cuba. During my brief stay in Calabazar de Sagua I spent the morning analyzing that thought after I had pondered the several layers of cumulus clouds passing over in different directions. What I noticed was that these clouds seemed much closer to the ground than what I remembered from similar experiences in the USA. Normally I associate cumulus clouds with higher altitudes, thus more unattached to humans, or perhaps in a sense impersonal; but here they seem to glide nearer to man, and to reflect the prevailing sense of the country’s hard won optimism.

This optimism runs counter to their daily reality; each Cuban is accompanied by a set of social and historic ironies, finely crafted, molded if you will, from fifty years of continuous revolución, a word now soured on the Cuban tongue, only repeated for effect in their “dichos o refranes” (the wise and often ironic “sayings”) when trusted friends come or when their indolence brags to their indifference with their inner pragmatism standing by as the final judge.

One sees their hard work, much of it having to do with the exasperation of missing components in the daily process of living; not just those materials necessary to build or repair, but also scarce or missing are the fundamental elements of communication and transportation infrastructure, thus impeding creative human interaction.

Searching for these materials and resources is a daily chore, as is searching for food, a task not always gratifying one’s expectations, even for the most stalwart modern hunter-gatherers.

Gladly, a shared song rises above these temporal and chronic annoyances. In this place one survives by placing communal unity first before all other things; one counts on ones faith community in ways we in the United States cannot conceive of. The verses from Ecclesiastes come to mind: “Divide your portion with seven or even eight, you can never be sure what evil may come over the earth.” (Ecclesiastes 11: 2)

Do we in the United States of America really (as an entire Christian nation) imagine ourselves doing that? Yes, there is generosity - extreme at times - towards any people stressed by crisis; but beyond the calamitous, do we really listen with our hearts and act based on the ongoing needs of others, either those known to us or strangers? This question, and certainly the specific way we experience our brothers and sister’s lives in Cuba, has the ability to transform not only our “thinking” but also our “acting”, thus our faith and our whole being is engaged in the wellbeing of the global community.

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Globally there is no “safety”. There is war, hunger, forced migration, international trade agreements disfavoring the already disadvantaged, and suffering on every side. No one of us is exempt any longer or beyond the reach of some fundamentalist’s rage. We know what that feels like here in the US a little better now; the difference is, is that we can hope that our government and economy will improve in time with an increase in investment and spending at the consumer level.

There is no such “consumer confidence” available to the Cuban population, historically deprived of commensurate wages for their education level, and literally attacked by a cruelly disadvantageous dual monetary system. Families depend on the generosity of their off-shore brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. to balance their pressing financial needs. Faith Communities depend largely on their relationships with international partners. This carries both blessings and great risks as remotely located churches are less likely to be visited, while churches near the central highway collect multiple partners and thrive.

Now, thanks to the Obama Administration, relief to families is possible again after eight years of privation, but if “charity begins at home” it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easily swallowed. Recently I was visiting a pastor in El Centro Presbytery whose sister had sent him two hundred dollars in cash, quite a fortune by local standards; he looked at me, the bills drooping in his hand and said, eyes downcast, “Me siento como si fuera un niño…” (“I feel like a little kid…”)

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During a walk to acquaint me with the Malecón in Sagua la Grande, a young elder of that church who was guiding my tour turned to me after explaining and showing me where she and her husband lived and said, “We have no options. We cannot move or sell our house. We dream of opportunities we know are far beyond our reach.”

How does a country survive that deprives its citizens of information, freedom of movement, living wages, and individual rights, not to mention freedom of speech?

The answer is partly found in its socialist propaganda that (ironically) paints an accurate portrait of what happened during the US occupation of Cuba beginning in 1898 during the Spanish- Cuban War, Cuba’s Second War of Independence against Spain which we misrepresent in our history books as the Spanish-American War, and ending in 1959 with the “triumph” of the Cuban Revolution.

Simply put, the titillating sensation of being liberated from the burden of both Spanish and North American colonialism carried the nation forward for nearly half a decade in the hope that the new (then) unaligned government could continue to realize the social miracles it had both promised and had initially accomplished; but leaders of the Cuban Revolution, reacting to the aggressive political forces and fears of its powerful neighbor, “el coloso del Norte” , the Colossus of the North, (José Martí), adopted a predictable but perhaps also regrettable socialist political defense that would define its post colonial identity, which for better or worse would drag its still expectant population into an economic confrontation and embargo that would shatter families and isolate the island from the surrounding world for decades.

Thus, the Cuban Revolution, now having turned fifty one, has failed to produce an economy capable of maintaining a stable internal population; its socialist government has failed to provide opportunities for individual growth and some measure of individual prosperity.

As humans, no one wants to live under a regime in which one has no voice. Given the chance they simply leave, thus contributing to the division of the family, a force perpetuated not so much be the desire to leave, rather by the necessity.

I’m thinking of a conversation I had with a church member who works in cartography and has access to a great deal of antique documents and maps dating from the Spanish conquest in the 1520’s, all of this amazing material completely unknown outside Cuba. As a state employee he is allowed four hours a week of Internet access on a phone line operating at 28 kbs. He has no way of connecting to any other academic institution; and if the book he is now writing is eventually published, it will remain in Cuba, never reaching the attention of his peers in the global community. Additionally, he is not allowed outside the country for professional conferences, ergo: controlling information is controlling power and limiting life force and creativity. This is the norm for most Cuban-North American cultural-scientific exchange. Perhaps there is scientific exchange with other countries, but I am unaware of those opportunities.

To quote C.S. Lewis, (Screwtape is writing to Wormwood) "I mean the delusion that the fate of nations is in itself more important than that of individual souls. The overthrow of free peoples and the multiplication of slave states are for us a means (besides of course being fun); but the real end is the destruction of individuals. For only individuals can be saved or damned, can become sons of the Enemy or food for us." (C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters)

Those who reach the end of their tolerance either find a way to leave, remain inconsolably miserable, or commit suicide. There’s a statistic Michael Moore didn’t bother to cite in his movie “Sicko”. In Cuba, one of the major causes of suicide is men reaching the conclusion that there is no way to support their families, don’t wish to begin again in a foreign land, and see no other hope of resolving their conflicts.

And not unlike us here in the United States, much of the younger generation is abandoning the values that their parents taught them in favor of a shoddy thin materialism that contributes to family dysfunction. Teenage pregnancy is rampant and divorce is common, thus the percentage of single parent families is rising.

The Presbyterian Church in Cuba has returned to its original call: To educate in both spiritual and social contexts, giving its members the capacitación (training) it needs to confront the world we all are living in.

This work is increasingly being carried out by its younger clergy and seminaristas who are filling the pulpits of El Centro Presbytery, eager to bring the Presbyterian Church in Cuba into focus with the rest of the world they now connect to via both legal and illegal means of communication.

While the church in Cuba struggles to keep it buildings together and looking decent, often with few resources available outside the aid offered by foreign churches, their constant focus is on the members, their physical maintenance and spiritual growth. Thus the verb “accompany” forms a key principal in its commitment to the community, expressed much in the same way as it is here: in basic human ministries: to feed, clothe, and acknowledge our neighbors in need.