Cuba's fight for religious freedom

By Jordan Erb

Luis Tornes Perez sat patiently on a patio in one of Havana, Cuba’s poorest neighborhoods. A chain-link fence draped in curtains surrounded the patio and a tarp covered the other wall. Corrugated steel served as the roof. The scene overlooked a cliff that dropped into the “sewage river,” where even the most desperate times wouldn’t warrant fishing.

Slowly, people filled the patio. Perez greeted them, his serious face breaking into a smile before welcoming each person with a kiss on the cheek. As the area filled up, Perez fought for his audience’s attention against the exhaust-filled coughs of 1950s Chevrolets and the hum of passing motorcycles.

The group is a small evangelical congregation, meeting in one of many so-called “house churches” that have been cropping up across the island since Fidel Castro loosened restrictions on religion in the 1990s.

Though Cuba underwent a period of intense religious liberation in the ‘90s and has religious freedom on paper, the country still plays host to religious discrimination. Scrutiny from the government and other religious groups puts an oppressive asterisk at the end of the on-paper religious freedom. Congregations are not allowed to construct their own churches, and some religious leaders claim to meet discrimination in the housing market. According to Perez, incognito government officials still sit in on church services, watching for dissent and stifling religious freedom in the meantime.

Perez would know. He spent years working for the Cuban government as a trained “intimidator” of religious people. The man standing in his house church with arms outstretched, palms turned upward, singing hymns, is the same stone-faced man who once served as an avid defender of Castro’s revolution.

“I liked working with the government; it gave me a certain type of importance in society,” Perez said. “It worked out because I had a strong desire in my heart to confront Christians. Any time that I could fight with a Christian or ridicule them, I felt really good.”

Perez was a part of Cuba’s Committee for Defending the Revolution, a Fidel-era organization that put eyes and ears in Cuban neighborhoods, looking for dissidents. Religious people were–and to some extent, still are–a high priority for the committee, and Perez worked the spiritual beat.

Luis Tornes Perez, a man who once worked as an intimidator of churches, left his job with the Cuban government to start a house church. Photo by Peter Erb.

He followed pastors to churches and sat in on services, ensuring that nothing negative was said about Fidel Castro or his power. Theoretically, these practices should have ended in 1992, when the fight for religious freedom began.

Chapter One: Genesis

Carlos Emilio Ham, a Presbyterian pastor and president of the Matanzas Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cuba, was a first-hand witness to these changes.

In April 1990, Ham, in line with 66 other religious leaders, sat watching Fidel Castro tug pensively at his dark beard. The revolutionary and then-president of Cuba was hearing the pleas of the pastors to bring religious freedom to the Caribbean nation.

Carlos Emilio Ham, one of 74 Cuban pastors who met with Fidel Castro to plead for religious liberty. Photo by Peter Erb.

After six hours of discussion, Castro did something unprecedented: he apologized. Castro had been in control of Cuba since 1959. It had been 31 years since he pushed religion out of the country.

With his apology came a shift. In 1992, a public referendum was held, and the people voted to amend the Cuban constitution. The original constitution held that the nation would be atheist, in line with strict Marxist/Leninist ideals. After the referendum, each citizen was free to choose if they wanted to be publicly religious, atheist, or agnostic.

Before the vote, religion existed mostly behind closed doors. Religious people would hide their crosses under their pillows and denounce religion in public. People of faith were not allowed in the Communist Party, were actively persecuted by people like Luis Tornes Perez, and were often sent to special military camps for people with "problems." 

Despite the outward appearance of his government, Castro himself was raised with religion. The Communist leader, influenced by the teachings of Marx and Lenin, cast religion aside for the principles of their ideology.

“Marxism/Leninism is a system in which the spiritual world, God, does not exist. All that is important is what man can do by his own doing,” said Carlos Crespo, an Evangelical preacher who practically crosses his T’s and dots his I’s with “amens” and “hallelujahs.”

Crespo has benefited from the constitutional amendment of 1992. He is a preacher in Havana, and has a small, but devoted congregation.

“They say that there’s never (religious discrimination) in Cuba. None. Never,” Crespo said. “But there are definitely restrictions that you feel. As an example of those restrictions, if you have land and you have money to build a church, even if you already have the people to meet in that church, you cannot build it.”

This is where the religious people of Cuba enter into the contradictory “free” religious society, one that is still scarred by religious oppression.

Chapter Two: Church and State

House churches, the kind that Crespo and Perez preach for, are necessary for Cubans who want to practice their faith–especially those who stray from “mainstream” religions. The only churches allowed to stand are those that were built before the Revolution in 1959. These churches represent the older religions, leaving the newer and smaller churches on the fringes.

Orestes Roca, a pastor with the First Baptist Church, finds shelter beneath this technicality. His church, a massive pink structure in the middle of Matanzas, was built in 1908. It stands exempt from government persecution or destruction.

But Roca and his congregation can’t find respite from the government’s eyes and ears–even today. Like Perez, Roca is well aware of the government officials that drift in and out of the pews of his church. The monitoring is far less than it was in years past, he said, but continues nonetheless.

Orestes Roca preaches at the First Baptist Church in Matanzas, Cuba. Despite being a legally-recognized church, Roca and his congregation are not exempt from governmental surveillance. Photo by Peter Erb.

“You never know exactly who it was, but sometimes you have a suspicion who it might be,” Roca said. “They participate in church, they act like a real church member, but you know that at some point during the week a member of your church is going to report back to the government.”

As a legally recognized, standing church, First Baptist may not have the same experiences as other unofficial house churches, Roca admitted. He said there may be some parts of Cuba where intimidation is still strong, but for his church in Matanzas, incidents are few and far between.

Ham, too, questions whether or not stories of persecution by the state hold any water. However, he admits that from where he sits in Matanzas’ Seminary–called “holy hill”–he is in a bit of a bubble.

“As we go farther towards the east of the country, farther from Havana, I have heard about problems, a lack of understanding between the church and the state,” Ham said. “But such a thing as a persecution by the state towards a pastor or a Christian because he or she is a religious person or a pastor? I don’t believe it.”

Though not so heavy as blatant persecution, pastors of house churches do encounter oppression. Since he started as a pastor in 1999, Perez and his wife have had to move 37 times.

“If the landlord sees or hears that I’m a Christian and that we’re going to gather and worship in the home, for fear of the government, they might say we have to leave,” Perez said. His wife, her head down, nodded in aching agreement.

During the past two years in Havana, the Perez family has moved four times. In June, they moved again.

“I’ve lost everything,” Perez said. “We can’t buy a set a furniture, because when we move, there are things we just can’t bring. Many of the things we do have get broken when we move. This is the experience of a lot of pastors.”

Chapter Three: Church and Church

For Cuban people of faith, the obstacles don’t end with the government. Some of the most intense discrimination comes from within the spiritual community, with differences between religions and religious sects sparking conflict.

To Evangelical Christians like Crespo and Perez, worship comes with loud singing and dancing, as God’s praise is meant to be heard, felt and seen. They are considered “charismatics,” and their services are typically louder and more lively than traditional services. Practitioners often claim the ability to speak in tongues.

The congregation looks on while a young girl preforms an interpretive dance at an Evangelical church service. Evangelical Christians are known as "charismatics," and are often discriminated against. Photo by Peter Erb.

Further, many of them find support from American missionaries, which causes tension amongst the religious community. To people of more mainstream faiths, this type of worship may be seen as foreign and open to criticism.

“You have on the other hand an explosion of neo-Pentecostals and charismatics, which apart from (the fact) that many of them are illegal, they make a lot of noise in their worship,” Ham said. “They have drums, they shout, and that bothers the neighborhood–even in Cuba, where everyone is dancing and shouting and singing.”

As president of the Matanzas Evangelical Theological Seminary, Ham is in touch with the nation’s religious affairs, but sees charismatic churches as more of a nuisance than a valid religious group.

Many Evangelicals are not exempt from imposing religious discrimination upon others, and take issue with religions such as Catholicism and Afro-Cuban religions, which make up some of Cuba’s most distinct religious groups.

Alexis O’Farrill is a religious leader of Yoruba and Palo Monte, two Afro-Cuban religions, and has experienced discrimination–though mostly from other religious groups. Palo Monte is the Afro-Cuban religion most commonly associated with witchcraft by other religions.

“I come from an African descent, and part of African descent is the religion and culture that we practice,” O’Farrill said. “Over the years, we’ve experienced many discriminations, mostly because of misunderstanding and lack of knowledge.”

Some of the misunderstandings come from the practices that people of Afro-Cuban religions follow, including sacrifice and what some perceive as idolatry. Sacrifice, according to O’Farrill, is positive in its ability to bring protection to the people and serve as a source of nourishment.

O’Farrill said that misconceptions about sacrifice also involve what is being sacrificed. Yes, he said, they do sacrifice animals, but they also sacrifice fruits and vegetables. In rural areas, this is a fact of life.

“One of the misunderstandings that happened historically was that these practices were dismissed as being ‘savagery,’ but not understanding that in the country, one is trying to survive, and these practices are part of survival,” O’Farrill said. “They are healthy things to survive.”

When O’Farrill was born, in 1970, the government prohibited the spread of Afro-Cuban religions. Now, he said, there is a broader acceptance of the faith. However, they still perform most of the ceremonies in secret, out of fear of criticism from the community, not necessarily the state.

O’Farrill and his peers are not the only ones who face discrimination. Elaine Saralegui is a pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church in Matanzas, and faces an added layer of discrimination based on her sexuality.

Saralegui, like most others her age, grew up under the government-sponsored belief that truth and the solution to man’s problems were found in science and reason, not religion. A self-proclaimed “revolutionary,” Saralegui liked to figure these things out for herself, and started exploring theology and its relationship with sexuality.

She moved from Atheism to Catholicism to the Baptist faith, finding a temporary home with Orestes Roca and his congregation of Baptists. Saralegui said that even in some of the churches where she was accepted, she didn’t have the same rights as straight people of faith.

Elaine Saralegui, a pastor in Matanzas, Cuba. Photo by Peter Erb.

“You might be welcomed in the door, you might even be celebrated and shown that they’re open-minded, but you don’t have the same rights,” Saralegui said.

Saralegui saw her coming out and pursuit of becoming a pastor as a way to express her activism, and found that others in the religious community were not so outspoken. She wanted to make a place where everyone was welcome, and thus developed the MCC.

“It’s really hard because even the churches that claim to be the most open have rejected us,” Saralegui said. “It’s been really hard because they were like family; people who worshipped together, and then feeling like we are rejected from that.”

Stan Dotson, an American missionary, works as a liaison between churches in Matanzas, and has been instrumental in making them more welcoming of each other. He has watched the tension between Saralegui and the other religious groups, and on the other hand, has seen Saralegui’s Metropolitan Community Church gain a foothold in the mainstream.

“When this came to the surface, it revealed that there were people who worship next to you that are very homophobic,” Dotson said. “That was very painful to learn, but that was because for 20 years they never talked about it.”

Saralegui’s church services are held on the roof of a member’s home, and bring together those who are otherwise unaccepted. Though they are welcoming to people of all sexualities, they are often dubbed “the gay church,” or “the church of weirdos” by others in the religious community.  

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Members of Saralegui's Metropolitan Community Church meet on a rooftop. Many are part of the LGBTQIA community, and are considered outsiders by Cuban society. Photo by Peter Erb.

Their congregation is mostly composed of LGBTQIA people, who find refuge there. According to Saralegui, these people do not have the same freedom to choose a religious community as straight people of faith. Further, the church is not legally recognized by the Cuban government as legitimate.

“We’d like to have legal standing,” Saralegui said. “The second thing is that we’d like to be known as a church that talks about what it means to be human, not to be known as a church that just talks about sexuality.”

Each day, they take steps toward this goal. The congregation takes part in LGBTQIA festivals and religious conferences around Cuba, and have the endorsement of Mariela Castro, Fidel Castro’s niece.

Endorsement from Castro, the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana and a champion of Cuban LGBTQIA rights, has helped their cause immensely.

Over time, Saralegui’s relationship with the Baptist church has improved, and the two congregations are working toward a functioning relationship. Now, the Metropolitan Community Church often uses the First Baptist Church’s pool for baptisms, and they have attended conferences together.

This relationship was built over years of emotionally-taxing conversations about homophobia and inclusion within the church. The need for religious tolerance and understanding, though not necessarily wanted across the spectrum, has gained interest amongst several of the groups, from Afro-Cuban religions to Baptism to MCC.

“There’s still a lot to be done,” O’Farrill said. “Worldwide, we need to learn more about religions–not even just this one–and achieve unity. It’s important for humanity.”

Chapter Four: Moving Forward

After a Sunday service at First Baptist Church, Paco, a pastor and founder of the Kairos Center, a foundation dedicated to integrating liturgy, the arts and social service in a Cuban context, chatted amiably with a man on the church’s front steps. The Kairos Center, which is tied to the First Baptist Church, is the hub of ecumenical work in Matanzas, and works to unify religious people throughout the city.

A man sings on the steps of the First Baptist Church before chatting with Paco, pastor and founder of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice. Photo by Jordan Erb.

Paco and others at the Kairos Center do so in a number of different outreach activities, including tapestry and music classes and a meals-on-wheels program for elderly folks around the city. They host ecumenical Christmas pageants for people of different congregations to come celebrate, and they’ve even reached out to Afro-Cuban neighborhoods to bolster that relationship.

“It’s created a really nice bridge, because in that neighborhood they mostly practice Afro-Cuban traditions,” Paco said. “That’s something that the Christian church usually rejects, and they see the Christian church as the church of white people. So we work in that neighborhood being respectful and positive towards their religion, to the point that we are able to raise up leaders in that community.”

Matanzas is often dubbed as the Athens of Cuba, the arts and culture hub of the nation and a hotspot of artistic, cultural and religious growth. Paco tries to capitalize on this notoriety by using it to get people of different faiths to work together for religious freedom.

Those in Cuba's religious community who want change are actively seeking it, but still there are those who resist it. Nonetheless, religious leaders remain hopeful for the possibility of change.

“First of all, I am a person of hope," Roca, the pastor of First Baptist Church, said. "I can’t believe anything else but that things are going to improve. I don’t expect that there will be radical or rapid changes, but I believe that with the way the world is now, something has to happen.”