Cuba Releasing 2900 Prisoners

[Susurrus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16324331

[RedSonRising]

That's interesting...such an immense number though, considering only 5 of their prisoners are considered political prisoners by the UN, last time I checked.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I see that the Catholic church has yet to loose any influence in Cuba...a shame.

[Ocean Seal]

I see that the Catholic church has yet to loose any influence in Cuba...a shame.
They never really had much to start with to be fair. I remember that the Pope went down there once in '99 and that was a huge surprise. I don't really think that it impacts Cuban politics.

[Magdalen]

I see that the Catholic church has yet to loose any influence in Cuba...a shame.

The Catholic Church in Cuba has actually, to an extent, helped defeat US attempts to build an anti-Cuban consensus by publicly speaking out against the blockade - it has certainly displeased the Cuban-American exiles, given their angry response both to the Papal visit in 1998, and the upcoming one next year. The Revolutionary Government has come to realise, particularly since the Special Period, that the assistance of the Church can on certain occasions useful in defending Cuban Socialism at home and abroad. Better that than to entirely alienate it and have it devoting its resources to the fermentation of counter-revolution!

It would be misleading to describe the Church as 'influential' in a major way - the majority of Cubans are not practicing Catholics. During the visit of John Paul II, Cuban Television was forced to use very restricted camera angles during the filming of the Papal Mass in Santiago to disguise large empty spaces in the crowd. The Cubans are perfectly aware of the reactionary role the Church has played in the past - don't think that such remaining tendencies within it go unwatched! However, the Cuban Constitution guarantees freedom of religion - it would be counter-productive to do otherwise; therefore, the Government allows representatives of the Church to express their opinion on public affairs, though it would never act in the interests of the Church rather than of the Cuban People. Neither is there any favouritism shown towards the Catholic Church - in recent years, there has been considerable outreach towards the small Orthodox Christian, Jewish and Islamic communities too. The Cuban state remains entirely secular - there is no religious interference in education or healthcare, and the majority of the leaders of the Government and Party are non-religious, although clauses making this obligatory were relaxed in the early 1990s.

[ckaihatsu]

[T]he majority of the leaders of the Government and Party are non-religious, although clauses making this obligatory were relaxed in the early 1990s.


But isn't this revisionism -- ?

[ckaihatsu]

(F.y.i.)





http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16324331





24 December 2011 Last updated at 05:03 ET


Cuba to release 2,900 prisoners as goodwill gesture


Raul Castro said 86 foreign prisoners from 25 countries would be freed


Cuba says it will release 2,900 prisoners, including some convicted of political crimes, in the next few days.

President Raul Castro said the move was a goodwill gesture after receiving numerous requests by relatives and religious institutions.

But US national Alan Gross, who is serving 15 years for crimes against the state, is not among those to be freed.





He was working as a contractor for the US state department.





Cuba denies holding any political prisoners, saying they are mercenaries in the pay of the US aiming to destabilise the government.

[Magdalen]

But isn't this revisionism -- ?

In My Life, Fidel cites a major turning-point in the attitude of the Cuban Revolution towards religious believers as being encounters with those involved in the Liberation Theology movement in Chile during the Allende regime in the early 1970s. Even at this point, he recalls the idea of an 'alliance between believers and non-believers... in support of the Revolution' being discussed. There were also significant influences from Jamaica, which was under the leadership of Michael Manley, and of course from the Sandinistas, for whom 'Christianity and Revolution - there's no contradiction' was a major slogan. The opening up of party membership to believers in 1991, although it was spurred on by the beginnings of the Special Period, was no knee-jerk reaction; rather, it was the culmination of a long period of internal discourse on the matter.

[Susurrus]

I was in Cuba recently, and met an old episcopalian priest in a green cassock that had a semi-military design to it. It turns out that a bunch of priests had taken part in the revolution, to the point that they had that cassock designed. So, obviously at least some religious influence from the beginning.

[ckaihatsu]

Thanks for passing along the info -- I guess the overall *general* concern would be about a possible ideological 'conflict of interest' between one's adherence to the precepts of an idealist / dualist worldview and to those of a *material* political revolution. (Please recall that the dualist and materialist worldviews are incompatible and irreconcilable, fundamentally.)

One could argue that just on the basis of *time spent*, the overhead required for maintenance of one's beliefs could be seen to compete with that required for revolutionary political duties. And if one subscribed to a religion that *required* proselytizing then the conflict of interest would certainly become apparent, I'd think.