From our Bureau of Troublesome Priests
He simply refuses to keep quiet. In his latest essay, Padre Alberto Reyes speaks of the need for “transitional” justice once the dictatorship ceases to exist. And he also speaks about the need for forgiveness and healing once the nightmare ends. Addressing all the Cubans who have actually supported the dictatorship, he also has this to say to them: “But for healing to be complete, forgiveness [of others] alone will not be enough, because we will also have to forgive ourselves.” Pray for Father Alberto. He is putting his life on the line.
Loosely translated from CubitaNow
I have been thinking about how to heal from the process of a dictatorship. Every dictatorship is an abusive system, and therefore, when a dictatorship ends and the transition to a democratic system begins, it is essential to hold a fair trial for those who harmed society. This is called “transitional justice,” and it is indispensable for the people to heal their wounds and focus on the future rather than on the pain and anger of their past.
“However, transitional justice does not erase the fact that any people who have suffered under a dictatorship will always have many things to forgive—and to forgive themselves for. Over time, we will have to forgive the fact that we were deceived as a nation, manipulated in the best of our ideals, and cunningly led into a system we never fought for.
“We will have to forgive the chain of deaths that this system caused: from the excessive executions in La Cabaña, through the war in Angola and all the armed conflicts we were dragged into, to the hundreds of thousands of people who died trying to escape to a different life, now resting forever in the sea, rivers, or impenetrable jungles.
“We will have to forgive those who spied on us, betrayed us, harassed us, and unjustly imprisoned us. We will have to forgive everything that was never possible because we were turned into a miserable people, submerged in a survival mindset, without hope, without dreams, and without the right to envision our own horizons.
“We will have to forgive the hunger we endured, the suffering caused by the lack of medicine, the inevitable uprooting of emigration, and the loneliness that came from that emigration. We will have to forgive the endless hours of darkness, rage, futility, and helplessness, the suffocating heat from which there was no escape, the torment of mosquitoes, and the preventable diseases that were not prevented.
“Yes, the day will come when we will have to say, ‘It is no longer the present; it is the past, and it must remain in the past,’ even though part of that past will still hurt, in some way, in the corners of the present. But for healing to be complete, forgiveness alone will not be enough, because we will also have to forgive ourselves.
“We must forgive ourselves for being a naive people who allowed ourselves to be seduced by someone sick with power, but above all, for realizing the deception and continuing to play along, slowly building the prison that now suffocates us.
“We must forgive ourselves for the applause, the euphoric May Day parades, the open forums, the marches of the ‘fighting people,’ the countless acts of ‘revolutionary reaffirmation,’ the complicity in acts of repudiation…
“We must forgive not only for passively allowing our children to be indoctrinated but for going further and teaching them ‘not to stand out,’ to stay silent, to agree in order ‘not to cause trouble.’ Deep down, we must forgive ourselves for teaching them to become slaves.
“We must forgive ourselves for our double standards, our fear of truth, and for abandoning those who dared to raise the voices that echoed in our own consciences. A true transition does not begin in the streets but in the soul, because in a transition, justice alone will not suffice. We cannot heal from a dictatorship without the dual process of forgiving and forgiving ourselves!”