Return of the repressed As Fidel Castro struggles in the post-Communist world, John Paul II is on his way to Havana
Olshan, Marc A
Marc A. Olshan RETURN OF THE REPRESSED Is Cuba getting religion? Cuba's current economic crisis, triggered initially by the withdrawal of Soviet aid in 1989, has forced its citizens to devise...
...And they are proving no less adept at "inventing" solutions to what many now openly refer to as a spiritual crisis...
...His interpretation is not that "the religious spirit of Cubans has grown...
...They "invent" additional bedrooms in already tiny apartments by building partitions with scrap lumber...
...The Cuban "invention" of religion may be interpreted as a predictable reaction to hard times and hollow ideology, a case of faith as last resort...
...Religion's ultimate shape and influence in Cuba are anything but predictable...
...Some of the reasons for the large numbers of new believers, not only in the Catholic but also in Protestant and Afro-Cuban churches, may not be so noble...
...Greater religious freedom may make the churches more attractive to those with few other outlets for self-expression or dissent...
...In the face of growing religious sentiment, however, the government has deliberately downplayed any potential conflict between the official atheism of the state and the convictions of believers...
...This situation created a reduction in the public practice of religion because not everyone dared to openly express their faith...
...Thus even in the absence of any explicit political meaning, placards picturing the pope with the words "Messenger of Truth and Hope" are implicitly subversive, at least in a society where up until now there has been only one message and one messenger...
...Food is "invented" by raising chickens on the balconies of high-rises...
...Church membership may represent a way of "inventing" access to otherwise unavailable consumer goods...
...Cubans call it "inventing...
...He travels to Cuba frequently...
...Cuba's current economic crisis, triggered initially by the withdrawal of Soviet aid in 1989, has forced its citizens to devise imaginative strategies for survival...
...Housewives cook with an array of "inventions," including recycled electric heating coils, makeshift kerosene burners, and homemade charcoal...
...For many Cubans, an inchoate sense of expectation seems to be replacing the resignation of recent years...
...But it did not result in a reduction of real religiosity or of the need for somehow expressing that contact with the transcendent...
...But they were carrying inside their souls the Virgin of Charity [patroness of Cuba], whom they venerated in the privacy of their homes...
...For many Cubans, disillusionment has given way to desperation...
...But, just as the "inventions" for economic survival generally rely on using earlier technologies, so Cubans' "invention" of religion represents a renewal of earlier practices...
...With the government's state-sponsored ideology unable to provide meat or meaning, Cubans are turning to religion...
...Whether this more-tolerant stance will temper the growth of religious sentiment or encourage it remains to be seen...
...Vaguely hopeful predictions are now being made about how Cubans will react when they gather in large numbers to see the pope...
...Castro's visit to the Vatican last year and Pope John Paul II's scheduled visit to Cuba in January 1998 are further signs of a shift in policy...
...The idea of "return" must be conditioned as well by the Cuban demographic reality: Most of the island's inhabitants were born after the revolution...
...Perhaps...
...Castro set the tone by meeting with evangelical Christians in 1990...
...In answering the question: "Are the Cuban people Catholic or not...
...A realistic assessment of this "return," however, requires recognizing that in the years immediately before the revolution only 24 percent of the population regularly attended Mass...
...There were people who didn't come to church, who didn't practice their faith...
...For others, the churches represent the best means for expediting travel out of the country...
...As a priest in Santiago de Cuba, the island's second largest city, explained it: We have lived for thirty-six years in a militantly atheist, Marxist-Leninist country...
...These points were recently argued by Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, a Cuban priest who is director of the Archdioce-san Study Center of Havana...
...For the churches display a relatively high degree of autonomy in a society in which almost all institutions, and most ways of earning a living, are controlled by the government...
...Rather there has been an increase in its public manifestation...
...For Cuba's bored and frustrated youth-limited in their possibilities for socializing, self-expression, and new experiences-the churches provide a social setting where they can enjoy their free time...
...But it is no less powerful or vital for that...
...The churches' contacts with sources of aid from outside the country mean that they are often able to provide what Cubans somewhat delicately refer to as "material possibilities...
...he responded that despite the fact that only a minority can be considered Catholic, the church in Cuba enjoys a level of esteem "probably higher than at any time in at least the last 150 years," and is seen by many as an institution at once "visible, honorable, steadfast, and independent": "The church today has a social influence that can't be expressed in numbers or definitive statements, and that transcends rates of religious practice...numbers that certainly have grown substantially in recent years...
...Marc A. Olshan is professor of sociology at Alfred University in Alfred, New York...
...Yet no one is suggesting that secular considerations are the primary reason that religion is once again playing a vibrant role in Cuban society...
...The specifics are less important than the idea of raw potential implicit in this contact, a potential that contrasts strikingly with the barrenness of the current system...
...In fact, the revolutionary government always portrayed itself as antireactionary rather than antireligious, but the distinction was lost on those who were ridiculed for attending services or prohibited from full participation in society, including joining the Communist party, as long as they were members of a church...
...This means that a majority of Cubans received an antireligious education and were raised in ignorance of Catholicism...
...The government's reaction to the wave of religious enthusiasm, for the most part, has been to get out of the way...
...The island's abrupt slide back into the third world has made Cubans expert at improvising solutions to everyday problems...
...I notice it in the growing attendance at daily Masses, and in the large number of people who wish to receive religious education...
...They "invent" transportation by jury-rigging a bicycle with enough wooden seats to carry the entire family...
...The following year the prohibition on simultaneous church and Communist party membership was lifted, and the government also legalized meetings in private homes for worship and Bible study, although religious schools are still prohibited and access to the mass media is denied...
...The only certainty is that Cubans will respond to spiritual crisis as they have to economic crisis, with a uniquely Cuban flair...
...Most of those approaching the church now are doing so for the first time...
Vol. 124 • October 1997 • No. 18
