La Lucha for Cuba: Religion and Politics on the Streets of Miami / Edition 1

by Miguel A. De La Torre

Overview

For many in Miami’s Cuban exile community, hating Fidel Castro is as natural as loving one’s children. This hatred, Miguel De La Torre suggests, has in fact taken on religious significance. In La Lucha for Cuba, De La Torre shows how Exilic Cubans, a once marginalized group, have risen to power and privilege—distinguishing themselves from other Hispanic communities in the United States—and how religion has figured in their ascension. Through the lens of religion and culture, his work also unmasks and explores intra-Hispanic structures of oppression operating among Cubans in Miami.

Miami Cubans use a religious expression, la lucha, or "the struggle," to justify the power and privilege they have achieved. Within the context of la lucha, De La Torre explores the religious dichotomy created between the "children of light" (Exilic Cubans) and the "children of darkness" (Resident Cubans). Examining the recent saga of the Elián González custody battle, he shows how the cultural construction of la lucha has become a distinctly Miami-style spirituality that makes el exilio (exile) the basis for religious reflection, understanding, and practice—and that conflates political mobilization with spiritual meaning in an ongoing confrontation with evil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520238527
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/10/2003
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1450L (what's this?)

About the Author

Miguel A. De La Torre is Assistant Professor of Religion at Hope College. He is the author of The Quest for the Cuban Christ: A Historical Search (2002), Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002), and, with Edwin Aponte, Introducing Latino/a Theologies (2001).

Read an Excerpt

La Lucha for Cuba

Religion and Politics on the Streets of Miami

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By Miguel A. De La Torre

The University of California Press

Copyright © 2003 Regents of the University of California
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-520-23526-6

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Chapter One

An Ajiaco Christianity

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, while the United States feasted on the traditional turkey dinner, a small Cuban boy of five was found off the coast of Fort Lauderdale clinging to an inner tube. Within a few days, Elian Gonzalez's name became nationally known, as the boy emerged at the center of a furious custody battle between the Exilic and Resident Cuban communities. Surrounding Elian's new temporary Miami home, Catholics and Protestants, rich and poor, young and old gathered to pray. Signs written in blue beseeched the nation to "Pray for Elian." Exilic Cubans held hands and surrounded the house to recite the rosary. These same worshipers were prepared to unclasp their praying hands and lock arms to prevent the U.S. government from taking Elian. While the world focused on the unfolding political saga of this child, a religious subtext developed. Some worshipers claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary hovering over Elian's Miami home. Others referred to Elian as the miracle child, or Miami's Jesus. Across the street lived a santera, a believer in the African-based Cuban religion known as Santeria. For her, Elian was a child ofOchun, the quasi-deity of the sea. She and other followers of Santeria believed that Ochun had spared Elian's life to bear witness that she is still the mother of all Cubans.

The Elian story illustrates how religion, politics, and power merge within the Miami Exilic community. The focus of this book is not to determine what Elian's fate should have been, or to review the legal and political battles that surrounded his case. Rather, it is to explore how the powerful Exilic Cuban community in Miami formed a religious response to the Elian story, and how that response unconsciously masks a political agenda designed to maintain and increase the power base of that community. Along the way, it attempts to understand how a community of fewer than a million Exilic Cubans amassed the power to influence the strongest government in the world, confounding for months the U.S. endeavor to return Elian to Cuba.

The Unfolding Saga

What actually occurred in the Straits of Florida before Elian's rescue at sea remains a mystery. According to the official reports, a seventeen-foot aluminum boat left Cardenas, Cuba, for the United States on November 21, 1999, at 4:30 a.m. Stories that Elian's mother was seeking freedom for her child notwithstanding, it appears she probably left Cuba to follow her boyfriend, who had planned the boat trip. On board were fourteen individuals, one of them Elian. Hours before the boy was rescued, the boat capsized off the Florida Keys. Except for Elian and two adults, all the others drowned, including his mother, Elizabeth Brotons. Two Broward County fishermen, cousins, were out on the water when they spotted an inner tube bobbing in the ocean, shortly after 9 a.m. Thanksgiving morning. When he saw a hand move from within the tube, one of the fishermen jumped into the ocean and pulled Elian out of the water. Exhausted by his ordeal, Elian was taken to the hospital for medical treatment. He was released the following day, and the Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS) gave temporary custody of the boy to Lazaro Gonzalez, the child's great-uncle, who lives in Miami. This ensured that the boy would be cared for while the agency determined his immigration status. The next day, November 27, from his home in Cardenas, the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, demanded the return of his son. With that, Elian was thrust to the epicenter of a fierce political tug-of-war between the Exilic and Resident Cuban communities.

Four days after Elian was pulled from the water, on November 29, he literally became the poster child for the Exilic community. Because it was believed that Fidel Castro might attend the World Trade Organization meeting that early December in Seattle, posters and flyers were rapidly produced with a picture of Elian on a stretcher under the caption "Another Child Victim of Fidel Castro." Elian's political appeal as a symbol of opposition to the Castro regime was obvious. Yet his true value to the community became apparent only with his transformation into a religious symbol. This rapid metamorphosis was not the Machiavellian formulation of a few individuals with political power, but rather the cumulative effort of the entire Exilic Cuban community in its attempt to comprehend the will of a God who had seemed so silent during the forty years of their "captivity" in Miami.

As a sacred symbol, Elian merged the religious and political hopes of the Miami Cuban community. According to Father Francisco Santana of Our Lady of Charity Shrine, "[Exilic Cubans] were making the connection that this child was like a sign that was sent to us by God, that somehow this was connected to the end of communism in Cuba" (Bikel 2001). How could Elian have become a deific symbol? Sacred language being rooted in symbols and myths, anything secular (a river, stone, star, animal, or human being) can be transformed into something sacred, a marker pointing to something greater than itself (Eliade 1963, 11). Religious people, such as prophets or apostles, or religious objects, such as totems, are not the only or even the supreme representations of Divinity. Anything or anyone can reveal aspects of the Divine (Eliade 1957, 20-65). And Elian, as deific symbol, not only reflected the sacred, but he also came into being in a sacred manner.

Elian's physicians insisted that the child failed to demonstrate any physical evidence of prolonged exposure to the sea, concluding that the boy was in the water for hours, not days. Nevertheless, as the story spread, his few hours in the ocean became two and a half days, in turn raising the question, How can a child survive that long, alone, in the sea? The answer, clearly, was, Only by a miracle from God. As the battle over Elian's immigration status grew fierce, his symbolic worth increased as the Exilic community spoke of him in deeply religious terms. An unconfirmed report, circulated widely within the community, recounted the tale of dolphins circling Elian's inner tube, protecting him from sharks. Dolphins, in the early Christian Church, symbolized salvation: not only was Elian saved, but now he had come to save. Even the Midrash (Jewish rabbinical commentaries) contains stories of how dolphins saved some Israelite children who lagged behind while crossing the parted Red Sea during their flight from Egyptian bondage.

"He's a miracle," said Maria Rodriguez, fifty-five, while attending the annual Three Kings Day Parade, a celebration of the three wise men bringing gifts to the baby Jesus. "The fact that he made it for two days, with dolphins circling around him-that proves he's a miracle." At his great-uncle's modest home, religious candles lined the sidewalk as the Exilic community began to compare Elian to Jesus. The day of the parade, January 9, El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish version of The Miami Herald, also linked Elian to the baby Jesus in its headline "The Three Magi Kings at the Feet of Elian."

The Church was even more open in its comparison of Elian to Christ. During a prayer vigil held on March 29, the clergy assured the crowd that God was on the side of the Exilic Cubans. "In Cuba, some people have made Elian a symbol of the new Che [Guevara], so it is not so unusual that some people in Miami are seeing him as the new Christ," said one of the prayer vigil organizers, the Reverend Gustavo Miyares of Immaculate Conception Church. Maria Ester Fernandez, another organizer of the multiple prayer vigils in front of Elian's house, best summed up the convictions of the Exilic community when she said, "We continue praying that Elian stays, because God wants it.... Just as Christ died for us and on the third day was resurrected, so will the Cuban people be resurrected."

Within a short time, the community began to point out that, like Jesus, Elian arrived just weeks before Christmas, at the end of the millennium, on the day on which thanksgiving is offered to God. Even the year 2000, the sixth millennium since the supposed creation of the earth, turned Elian, like Jesus, into a symbol of hope. Along with likening Elian to Christ, the community also believed him to be protected by the Virgin Mary. As many as forty people attested to seeing the image of the Virgin on the glass door of TotalBank in Little Havana. She appeared, it was believed, to protest Elian's return to Cuba. The bank, on Twenty-seventh Avenue, quickly became a pilgrimage stop for the multitudes that came with flowers. Some rubbed their babies against the windowpane for good luck. One woman reported seeing a vision of the Virgin with child surrounded by two giant dolphins. These stories are reminiscent of the widespread Cuban tale of drowning fishermen being saved by la Caridad del Cobre (the Virgin of Charity), Cuba's patron saint. Even la Virgen de Guadalupe, believed to have appeared to an indigenous Mexican peasant more than four hundred years ago, made an appearance as a spot on a mirror in the bedroom where the boy slept.

The Exilic community also created religious rituals to bind the sacred to the secular. On Mother's Day, May 14, 2000, dozens of women and children, vestidos de luto (dressed in mourning black), gathered by the seawall behind the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity to honor Elian's mother. A prayer service was held, culminating in the tossing of roses into a makeshift raft. Ana Rodriguez, thirty-five, a mother of three who participated in the event said, "It's for her and all the mothers that have died for freedom. Not only Cuban mothers." Having turned Elian's mother into a martyr, the community continued to honor her memory by naming a street after her (87 Court in Hialeah Gardens) and erecting a shrine to her at the Bay of Pigs memorial on Thirteenth Avenue in Little Havana.

As the sacred and political occupied the same space, the boundaries between the two became blurred in the minds of the supporters who gathered before Elian's house to pray. Jorge Mas Santos, the chairperson of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), the most powerful Exilic Cuban political lobbying organization in the United States, helped complete this fusion when he said, "Praying in a religious ceremony is the best way to show our support." Despite the fact that the official Catholic Church hierarchy of Miami took a position of neutrality, citing "moral uncertainty," local priests became major players in the unfolding drama. The Reverend Francisco Santana, of the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, literally brought the church into Elian's Miami home. Six nights a week, he celebrated a private mass for Elian's family, and while not specifically praying for Elian to stay-so as not to contradict the Church-he led prayers asking for God to touch Elian's father, Juan Miguel, so that he could love as a father should despite any political pressure received from the Castro regime. Albeit in a roundabout way, those gathered essentially prayed for Elian to stay.

As Miami's miracle child, Elian is credited with forging new ties between Catholic priests and mainline evangelical Protestant pastors, traditional rivals in both Miami and La Habana. Father Santana and fellow Catholic priests, along with Protestant ministers, made ecumenical history when they officially turned the protest for justice in front of Elian's house into a daily vigil. Santana proclaimed, "We are transforming, as of this moment, the cries demanding justice in front of Elian's house into a permanent prayer vigil, so that God can complete the miracle that He himself begun." Six Catholic priests and six mainline Protestant pastors (viewed as the twelve disciples of Christ) took turns leading the nightly prayer vigil. On Fridays, they led joint prayer services. Presbyterian pastor Manuel Salabarria said it best: "We have a common ground, a common interest, and a common purpose." To maintain this alliance, the Reverend Santana put aside the devotion to Mary so as not to "offend" the Protestants. During one of these massive prayer vigils, tens of thousands of Exilic Cubans marched down Calle Ocho (Eighth Street) in the shape of a cross, as both Catholic priests and Protestant ministers joined forces in proclaiming the miracle child. As a sacred symbol, Elian had brought temporary healing to centuries of religious rivalry, surely a task beyond the ability of mere mortals.

Using Elian as a symbol was not limited to Catholics and Protestants. Practitioners of Santeria also saw religious symbolism in the boy. One of the side stories that emerged during the Elian saga centered on a note that Lazaro Gonzalez, the boy's great-uncle, wrote to Elian's grandmothers. He entrusted the note to Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, host to the boy's grandmothers in late January 2000 during their trip to the United States. Sister O'Laughlin forgot to pass the note on, finding it in her pocket days later. The note warned that Castro wanted the child so he could make a Santeria sacrifice of him. This concern was based on the most frequently repeated rumor on the streets of Little Havana: that Castro had been forewarned of a child saved by dolphins in the sea who would overthrow his regime and that he had to acquire the boy to prevent the fulfillment of the prophecy. Elian (Jesus) was being sought by Castro (Herod), who wanted to kill the messiah threatening his rule. Even Miami's auxiliary bishop, Agustin Roman, was quick to make the comparison between Castro and Herod after reading the Scriptures about Herod wanting Jesus killed to preserve his reign.

According to both Resident and Exilic practitioners of Santeria, Castro participates in this Afro-Cuban religion, even traveling to Africa to be initiated into its mysteries. Yet the annual oracles indicate that somehow Castro had offended Eleggua, the first and most powerful orisha (quasi-deity). Eleggua is depicted as a child, and some see Elian as the child whom Eleggua had chosen to overthrow Castro. This, Exilic devotees of Santeria believe, is behind Castro's obsession in having Elian returned.

Some believe Castro's obsession may be rooted in his own experience with his estranged wife, Mirta Diaz-Balart de Nunez, who left for the United States with their five-year-old son, Fidelito, against Castro's wishes. While Castro was imprisoned in the early 1950s for his revolutionary activities, his divorced wife, unbeknown to Castro, brought his son to Miami to be raised in the United States. Castro was incensed that his Miami relatives and political enemies, the Diaz-Balarts, would be raising his son as an Exilic Cuban. He vowed to regain his son and his honor, regardless of the consequences. Eventually, Castro convinced his estranged wife to allow him to see his son while Castro was exiled in Mexico, promising to return the child to his mother within a few weeks. The mother agreed, but fearing Castro would not keep his promise, she had Fidelito kidnapped and returned to Florida. Eventually, Mirta Diaz-Balart and son returned to La Habana, where they lived for five years, but when the Castro government took a more pronounced Marxist turn, Mirta left for Madrid without Fidelito. Some claimed he chose to stay with his father; others insist that Castro would not let his son leave the island. Fidelito would eventually study in the Soviet Union, becoming a geophysicist, marry a Russian (whom he eventually divorced), and serve as the head of Cuba's nuclear power program. Ironically, Miami Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, nephew of Mirta and cousin of Fidelito, was one of the major advocates of keeping Elian in Miami. Could it be that the Elian custody battle was motivated by family events that had occurred some forty years earlier?

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from La Lucha for Cuba by Miguel A. De La Torre Copyright © 2003 by Regents of the University of California. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Preface

1. An Ajiaco Christianity
2. La Lucha: The Religion of Miami
3. Psalm 137: Constructing Cuban Identity while in Babylon
4. Machismo: Creating Structures of Oppression
5. The End of the Elián Saga: The Continuation of La Lucha

Notes
References
Index