NCC blames United States
Church council sees no evil in Cuba
By Alan F.H. Wisdom, Special to The Layman, January 30, 2012
A National Council of Churches (NCC) delegation to Cuba, including Presbyterian Church (USA) Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons, lamented the strained relations between that island nation and its neighbor to the north. U.S. church leaders in the NCC delegation late last year cast blame almost entirely on their own country, denouncing U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba and the U.S. imprisonment of five convicted Cuban spies. They levied no comparable criticisms against the Cuban communist regime of Raúl and Fidel Castro.
Preaching in Havana’s Episcopal cathedral on November 27, NCC General Secretary Michael Kinnamon discussed the challenges facing U.S. and Cuban churches. “And hanging over all of this is the U.S. embargo/blockade and the imprisonment of the Cuban Five [spies], both of which our American churches have forcefully condemned,” Kinnamon said. He added his regret at “the continued U.S. animosity toward Cuba.” The NCC official made no mention of Cuban animosity against the United States.
The November 28-December 2 trip involved “the highest ranking U.S. church delegation to visit the island in [the] memory” of Cuban church leaders, according to the NCC. Besides Parsons and Kinnamon, the delegation included top officials of the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church in America and Church World Service.
U.S. sanctions are ‘the major obstacle’
A concluding joint statement by the NCC and its Cuban counterpart borrowed the Castro regime’s rhetorical spin on the island’s sagging economy, referring delicately to “the current ‘updating’ of Cuban economic policies.” By contrast, the joint statement spoke frankly of America’s economic troubles: “the growing income disparity and high level of unemployment now affecting so many in the United States.”
The Cuban and U.S. church councils urged the “speedy and complete fulfillment” of President Barack Obama’s promise to “revise longstanding U.S. policy toward Cuba.” They noted with thanks “the real, but still-too-tentative steps toward normal relations between our countries, including the lifting of some travel restrictions by the Obama administration in January of 2011.” The councils did not voice any requests for the communist Cuban government to revise its longstanding policies.
The joint statement insisted that “important issues still need our attention.” Of the three issues listed, two concerned actions by the United States that the councils opposed. The first was the U.S. “embargo, which is the major obstacle to the resolution of differences.” The statement did not mention Castro regime policies that prompted the U.S. sanctions: its repression of its own people and its sponsorship of non-democratic, anti-U.S. movements and governments throughout the hemisphere.
The second issue raised by the church councils was “the imprisonment of the Cuban Five (whose sentences have been deemed unjust by numerous human rights organizations …).” The Cuban Five admitted that they were Cuban intelligence agents who spied on U.S. military bases and anti-Castro Cuban exile groups in South Florida. A Miami jury convicted them of espionage in 2001. One of the five was also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, for his role in assisting the Cuban government in shooting down two unarmed Cessnas from which an exile group had been dropping pro-democracy leaflets and helping Cuban dissidents escape the island.
The five spies “should not have been tried,” according to the NCC’s Kinnamon. An NCC news release expressed dismay that the five “were convicted of espionage in the U.S. even though they were monitoring the activities of Cuban expatriate counterrevolutionaries plotting against the Cuban government.” Apparently, the council does not find anything wrong with foreign intelligence agents spying on U.S. citizens nonviolently opposed to a communist dictatorship.
While in Cuba, the NCC delegation visited family members of the Cuban Five. It lamented the fact that the families could not visit their relatives in U.S. prisons. “We ache with them for this situation that weighs so heavily,” Kinnamon said.
‘Not here to pass judgment’ on Cuban abuses
The third issue of concern to the Cuban and U.S. councils as “the incarceration in Cuba of American citizen Alan Gross.” Gross is a State Department subcontractor who has been sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison for “acts against the independence and territorial integrity of the State.” Those acts consisted in supplying laptop computers and satellite phones to Cuba’s tiny Jewish community.
The NCC delegation visited Gross in prison and mentioned his case to Raúl Castro. But Kinnamon was careful not to affirm the American’s innocence or criticize the Castro government’s treatment of him. “I am not here to pass judgment,” the NCC head asserted, “but I care about him as a person – the humanitarian issue.” The NCC delegation did not report raising the cases of any other persons imprisoned in Cuba.
The PCUSA News Service gave exhaustive coverage to the NCC visit to Cuba: 11 articles spread over 5 weeks, most authored by news service director Jerry Van Marter. There was hardly an unfavorable word toward the Cuban government. On the contrary, the news service gave extensive space to a series of meetings the delegation held with top Cuban officials. The officials were quoted defending their communist regime and denouncing the United States. The PCUSA News Service stories provided no space for rebuttals from anti-Castro Cubans or Americans. Indeed, it appears from the delegation’s schedule that it did not meet with any Cuban dissidents.
Ricardo Alarcón, head of Cuba’s National Assembly, told the visiting church leaders that “from the time of Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. has been trying to incorporate Cuba.” Alarcón maintained that “the only condition we have ever placed on normalization of relations is that it be based on equality and mutual respect by both countries, but for our small country that desire has always been usurped by U.S. power.” The Cuban legislator contended: “The [U.S.] embargo is not hurting the Cuban government, but only the Cuban people. It is only trying to turn people against a revolution they support by provoking hunger, suffering and desperation.” The PCUSA News Service article on the Alarcón meeting did not note the difficulty of determining whether the Cuban people actually support the communist revolution, as they have never been allowed to vote in free elections.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Cuban Council of Churches leaders lauded Alarcón as “a friend of the churches.” Kinnamon presented a gift to the National Assembly head and declared him to be “an honorary ecumenist.”
Jailed dissidents ‘were not, in our opinion, political prisoners’
Cuban Foreign Mini
ster Dagoberto Rodríguez treated the NCC delegation to an attempted vindication of the communist regime’s human rights record. “The whole point of the revolution was to liberate our people,” Rodríguez declared. “We are concerned for our whole people but unfortunately, sometimes the international focus on human rights is strictly individual. We are not perfect, but we’ve been accused based on our political system.”
The foreign minister claimed that 75 dissidents jailed in 2003 “were not, in our opinion, political prisoners.” He said the prisoners “were jailed for their actions – paid for by foreign powers to subvert Cuba.” Rodríguez insisted, “We believe in our basic political system and respect yours.” But he injected an accusation that “the political machinery in the U.S. is manipulated by a small minority.” The PCUSA News Service article on the Rodríguez meeting did not observe that Cuba’s political machinery is completely controlled by a small minority called the Communist Party.
As paraphrased by the news service, an economist at the state-run University of Havana told the visiting U.S. church officials that “Cuba’s recent economic reforms are ‘like healing surgery’ – intended to improve but not abandon the socialist principles of the Cuban revolution.” Osvaldo Hernández asserted that “the Cuban state has been built on three social guarantees: free education, free health care and livable pensions for all retired workers.” He claimed, according to the news service, that “illiteracy in Cuba has been eliminated and the Cuban health care system is the envy of much of the world.”
Hernández pointed to U.S. economic sanctions as “a powerful negative factor.” He admitted, however, to some “mistakes” by the Cuban government. “Cuba has been plagued for years by anemic economic growth, gross inefficiencies and a hefty trade imbalance,” in the words of the news service. The Cuban economist held out hope that these deficiencies could be corrected through new policies encouraging self-employment in small businesses and farms. “This means understanding socialism in a different way,” Hernández explained.
U.S. sanctions as theological heresy
A December 1 symposium between the U.S. and Cuban church councils yielded consensus on the evils of U.S. economic sanctions. Participants condemned the sanctions as not only bad policy but also theological heresy. “The blockade and the resulting suffering negates the fundamental Biblical tenet that God is the father of us all,” declared Cuban Presbyterian theologian Reinerio Arce. “The blockade denies the existence of the Holy Spirit, which is the God who inhabits us all as God’s people, by seeking to isolate Cubans from the rest of the world.”
Arce upheld the kind of pro-Castro political theology that has characterized the Cuban Council of Churches. He argued that “theology must be political and economic if it is to be relevant.” The Cuban theologian affirmed, “So for Jesus there was nothing closer to the theological than the economic and political … the cross has only one connotation: to reject Roman injustice and imperialism.”
PCUSA Stated Clerk Parsons responded by characterizing the United States as “strong but fearful.” Parsons alleged, “We have become fearful of ‘the other’ … and it’s hard to make good decisions when you are afraid.” The Stated Clerk agreed with Cuban theologian Adolfo Ham’s assertion that “[w]hat the churches in both Cuba and the U.S. have to do is change the mentality in U.S. politics that punishment, not reconciliation, is the most effective foreign policy.” Parsons chimed in: “The heart of the Bible message is reconciliation, so when the actions of human beings run counter to reconciliation, we are working against God.”
U.S. churches “are just beginning their departure from colonialism,” remarked Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. “We are looking at Acts and beginning a conversation about first century ‘socialism’ that might get us past barriers in both Cuba and the U.S., because we’ll understand that life abundant comes from sharing our resources, not withholding them from each other.” The PCUSA News Service article on the symposium did not cite any speakers challenging the assumption that socialism is the best and most Biblical economic system.
Always looking on the bright side, except one dark spot
The news service also featured a series of upbeat pieces on the Cuban church and society. One article detailed how “Special Needs Kids Get Special Educational Care at Havana School.” It quoted the director of the government-run school proclaiming, “These children are our treasure.” The news service celebrated special education as “one of the innovations of Fidel Castro’s revolution that didn’t exist prior to his 1959 triumph.”
Another article described the partnership between the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Matanzas and the local HIV/AIDS center. “Cuba has done an effective job of prevention and treatment and has one of the lowest HIV infection rates in Latin America,” the news service trumpeted.
A third article highlighted a seminary-related model farm at which “peasant farmers … learn and practice ‘spiritual ecology.’” A fourth article offered an affectionate profile of the seminary’s students. A fifth article reported that “Cuban Presbyterians [are] constructing [their] fourth new church in 20 years.” The news service presented the new building as a welcome sign that the communist government had gone “from being hostile to churches [before 1991] to neutral toward them.” Many of these articles tagged the U.S. economic sanctions as a negative factor detracting from the positive stories that they shared.
A darker view of the island, overlooked
Although the PCUSA News articles alluded to some Cuban government “mistakes” in the past, none of them contained any criticism of current Cuban policies. Major human rights groups, by contrast, have many concerns about today’s Cuba.
Human Rights Watch, for example, reports: “Cuba remains the only country in Latin America that represses virtually all forms of political dissent. In 2011 Raúl Castro’s government continued to enforce political conformity using short-term detentions, beatings, public acts of repudiation, forced exile, and travel restrictions.” The group says that “Cubans who criticize the government are subject to criminal charges,” and they “are exempt from due process guarantees.” Human Rights Watch indicates that “[d]ozens of political prisoners remain in Cuban prisons, according to respected human rights groups on the island.”
Amnesty International reports that in 2011 “[a]ll media remained under state control, impeding Cubans’ free access to independent sources of information.” Amnesty adds: “Police and state security officials continued to intimidate and harass independent journalists, scores of whom were arrested and imprisoned only to be released days or weeks later without charge or trial. Many of the detainees reported that they were put under pressure t
o stop taking part in dissident activities, such as anti-government demonstrations, or sending reports to foreign media outlets.“
Freedom House pegs Cuba barely above “the worst of the worst” in the world. It rates the island nation as “Not Free” in terms of both political rights and civil liberties.
These kinds of concerns for human rights appeared nowhere in public reports on the NCC trip to Cuba. It is not recorded that the U.S. church delegation raised any such concerns, other than the case of Alan Gross, in its meetings with multiple high-level Cuban officials. But the NCC’s Kinnamon did express outrage about one prison in Cuba, the one on the U.S. military base at Guantánamo. In a Thanksgiving Day sermon at the Matanzas seminary, Kinnamon demanded “a commission to bring to light all the torture practiced under the Bush administration, including at Guantánamo.” The NCC general secretary apparently saw no need to ask for any investigation of the torture practiced elsewhere in Cuba under the Castro regime.
Alan F.H. Wisdom, a freelance writer and PCUSA elder, is an adjunct fellow with the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.