Travel in Cuba offers glimpses of religious life despite communist rule
Cubans often enjoy freedom of worship under a government wary of criticism
When I first started planning a trip to Cuba earlier this year, I had an image of the country as a place where religion wasn’t tolerated, as a place where godless communism had pushed all signs of religious life underground, a place where I would have to look hard if I wanted to find religious believers of any stripe.
And was I ever wrong.
It is true that the Cuban government has strong restrictions on religion, the most severe in the Western Hemisphere, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.1 But like so much about Cuba, the Caribbean nation’s treatment of religion is marked by contrasts and contradictions. The communist government seems to be most concerned about activities that would undermine government authority, so you aren’t going to find anything at all like the politically infused religiosity common in the United States. And the government does keep a watchful eye on religious organizations, requiring them to register and prohibiting various activities such as operating religious schools. But Cuba has been officially a secular rather than atheistic state since the 1990s, and activities such as worship services, some charity work and the construction of church buildings are openly carried out.
And, most surprising to me, a six-story-high marble sculpture of Jesus known as Cristo de La Habana (Christ of Havana), which was unveiled shortly before Fidel Castro came to power, continues to overlook the capital city from a hill immediately east of the historic downtown. It is not as prominent as the much better known Cristo Redentor of Rio de Janeiro, but neither is it hidden.
I traveled to Cuba for 10 days in September primarily for my personal education.2 Although I did not go for the purpose of learning specifically about religious life in the country, my travel gave me these four glimpses at how small pockets of religion thrive in a country where it does not get beneficial government attention as it does in some other nations:
Santería, Cuba’s home-grown religion
One of my walking tours in Cuba took me to Regla, a small community reached via a short ferry ride across Havana Harbor. It was there that I meet a guide who showed me some of the sites frequented by santeros, as followers of Santería are known. Santería, a which has neither neither a leader nor scriptures as a central authority, is a polytheistic, syncretic religion with African origins that has incorporated Catholic saints and various symbols to represent its gods. Much of Cuba’s Catholicism has a Santerían tint to it, and the religion has spread to Cuban communities in other countries.
The 19th-century Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Regla, as the Catholic church in Regla is known, draws Catholics and santeros alike for prayer and contemplation. But what struck me most during my tour were my guide’s words about what santeros experience when they come to Regla. There, they are able to step into the bay where they give offerings such as fruits and flowers to Yemayá, the Santería god of the ocean. There, my guide told me, santeros experience the divine presence; she described that experience in much same terms as I would describe sensing my God through nature, such as when I stand on a remote beach or climb a mountain peak.
She asked me what I believe; I told her as a Christian I seek, however imperfectly, to follow the teachings of Jesus, who called on his followers to love their neighbors, and that everybody is a neighbor. It was a belief she seemed to appreciate. I saw later in the walk the love she showed for her neighbors as she shared some over-the-counter medicine I had brought for her.3 She was one of those people who radiated kindness, and she jumped at the opportunity to support her neighbors in need. Our religions are very different, but when it came to the importance of love I believe we are on the same page.
A helpful priest
The inadequacies of the public infrastructure are a fact of everyday life in Cuba, and I experienced one aspect of that firsthand as I struggled to find my way around a bus station that had a lack of signage and customer service desks that were insufficiently staffed. A man in his 30s approached me and told me I looked confused. I confessed that I was.
And so it was that met a Catholic priest who helped me get on the right bus. During our brief conversation, I asked him what it was like to be a priest in Cuba. He obviously enjoyed his work, and he assured me that Cuba does have freedom of worship — but that’s not quite the same as freedom of religion. He said he often finds himself negotiating with local officials when he wants a church activity that goes beyond worship. Officials are usually accommodating, he told me — but they’re also the ones who get the last word about what the church can do.
The sounds of Pentecostalism
The sounds of Pentecostal-style music were distant but unmistakable as I walked through the upscale (by Cuban standards) Vedado neighborhood of Havana on a Sunday morning. About a block later, I came across the source: an imposing art deco structure with people streaming in. Even from the other side of the street, the music was intense; it must have been ear-shattering inside. I heard occasional shouted hallelujahs. I could see no identification sign, which wasn’t surprising considering how unusual such signs are in the country. But an Internet search later identified the building as the Iglesia Metodista Univeritaria, or University Methodist Church, likely the largest church in the Cuban Methodist denomination, which is separate from any Methodist denomination in the United States.
I can’t tell you much more about the church than that, but it did confirm that the priest wasn’t lying about freedom of worship. In most of the United States, such music would not be permitted in a crowded residential area such as that surrounding the church. The award-winning church edifice, by the way, was built in the 1950s and can be seen in various city architecture tours.
An American-based church that didn’t seem like it
I had walked by that Methodist church on my way to a worship service of a Latter-day Saint church nearby. I’ve attended LDS services in other major cities of Latin America such as Quito and Bogotá. In both of those cities, the services I attended had an unmistakable American presence as Americans were part of the congregational leadership, thanks in part to their location in neighborhoods popular with American expats. I expected something like that in Havana. But the only sign I saw of an American presence was one other U.S. visitor; all indications were that this congregation was fully Cuban.
The service was held not in a church structure, but inside one of the city’s ubiquitous row buildings, where a variety of residences and businesses share inside walls. About half of the congregation was dressed in U.S.-style Sunday best, such as white shirts and ties for the men, dresses for the women, while the rest were attired in casual clothing. A couple hundred were in attendance, requiring some to sit in an overflow area.
I was surprised when I first walked in the door (which, if it had a sign, I didn’t see it) to see a young male missionary, distinguished as such by dress-up attire with name tag. I was surprised because I knew there were no proselytizing missionaries in Cuba; as it turned out, he was indeed a Cuban missionary, one of the first ever formally called to serve that role. He was called to serve not in Cuba, but elsewhere in Latin America, he told me, and he had temporarily home to get visa issues resolved.
Despite the lack of a formal proselytizing program or U.S.-based missionaries, I was told, the denomination in growing in Cuba. The number of LDS congregations in the Havana area has increased from one about a decade ago to five or six today.
In its most recent official report on international religious freedom from the U.S. State Department, nearly all the problems mentioned with Cuba involved arrests and other types of persecution of religious leaders who had publicly criticized the Cuban government. Some religious critics of the government received prison sentences of five years or more, and some were forced into exile. As a result of these government actions, the U.S. State Department has classified Cuba as a “Country of Particular Concern” in terms of religious freedom.
Under U.S. law, U.S. residents cannot legally travel to Cuba for purposes of tourism; most who travel there do so under a law allowing visits with the purpose of “support for the Cuban people.”
Medicines are in extremely short supply in Cuba; in our communications before I left home, my guide had told me she needed fever-reducing medicine for her family. Knowledgeable tourists to Cuba frequently bring medicines with them to give to Cuban acquaintances or to health clinics.