The socialist revolution in Cuba led by communist dictator Fidel Castro declared itself to be atheist and does everything it can to undermine Christianity, including dabbling in Santeria.
Yoe Suarez continues his series via The Washington Stand:
The Cuban State as False Religion (Part 2)
Although it is possible that there will never be a reference from the ruling party in Cuba, since the Revolution claims to be atheistic in the Soviet style and considered religion as a bourgeois remnant, several sources assure that Santeria and spiritualism were a presence in the socialist leadership.
Some of the people closest to Fidel Castro practiced one or the other: René Vallejo, commander of the Rebel Army and his personal doctor; Celia Sánchez, his secretary and close friend; and Haydée Santamaría, anti-Batista fighter and president of the ruling Casa de las Américas until her suicide in 1980.
Fidel Castro’s relationship with Santeria dates back to the first moments of the guerrilla group against Fulgencio Batista in the Sierra Maestra. The writer Richard de Broussard has claimed that the dictator commissioned native santeras from the eastern mountains to make protective talismans for him, his brother, and another select group of his loved ones.
The condition imposed by the santeras is that they return the receipts once the Revolution had triumphed, says Broussard, who interviewed the person in charge of returning the talismans, who is currently outside the Island. Former Cuban officials have confirmed the existence of a specialized body, called Group M, in charge of linking alleged practices of the Cuban political police, who defected in 1995 and gave the FBI a detailed report on the use of hypnosis, parapsychology, and drugs in that Castro military force.
On the other hand, for the American sociologist Juan Clark, it is curious that while religion has been denied access to the mass media since 1960, “the Government, which controls them all, has subtly promoted through the same as Santeria, which lacks a strong moral code.”
In his opinion, this “syncretism between Afro beliefs and Catholicism is presented as the majority religion in Cuba, in a clear effort to undermine traditional Christian denominations.”
Continue reading HERE.
You can read part one of the series HERE.
At least partly, the matter fits into the broader plan to replace pre-Castro Cuban culture and society with a suitably Castroite version, obviously better suited to the nature and purposes of the “:revolution.”
Every time I see that primitivism that has taken over Cuba it makes me sick to my stomach. Can Cuba be any more latrine than its become?
Cuba is overrun by vulgarity and tackiness, both of which were always characteristic of the “revolution,” which encouraged anything in its own image. Cuba was never a byword for refinement, but that was aspired to and respected, and overt chusma behavior was always looked down upon.