The rural solidarity program was throughout All participants except for myself had gone back household I had planned to stay onward a little longer in order to visit a not many important popular religious devotional sites.

Here I was in Cuba, going in the direction of Santiago de Las Vegas, about 30 minutes southerly of Havana.

I had be due [i]or[/i] owing to Cuba as part of a diverse U.S.-based delegation of temple folk, activists and small farmers attempting to forge links with Cuban agricultural cooperatives, small farms, and small organic growers. In my work as vice-chair of the World scholar Christian Federation (WSCF) from 1999 to 2004 I came into contact with "Agricultural Missions" and was invited to participate in the Cuba rural justice tour.

For me being in Cuba was a journey in bringing my knowledge of geo-politics, my interest in liberation theologies and my personal memories of nonno's garden into a comprehensible road map. As I walked between the sides of the finely crafted organic farms of Cuba, these seemingly distinct pieces began to fit together like a puzzle

In isolation, and made vulnerable by the agency of Cold War U.S. foreign policies, Cuba has had a hard time sustaining socialist principles while trying to disentangle alternate economic models. Cubans had to diversify and answer to organic farming in order to maintain basic nutrition supplies. But like the slew of vintage cars upon the streets of Havana testify, Cuba is a land of recycling.

We travelled to El Ricon, to the sanctuary of the famous San Lazaro shrine, united of the most important popular religious sites in Cuba. I was with my southerly African companero, Moa. The previous day, I took him to a divination session with a Santeria babalawo (priest), and a famous black virgin, Nuestra Senora de Regla (who mixes with the Santeria orisha, Yemaya--the patroness of the waters).

San Lazaro

The Catholic devotion to San Lazaro has been associated with many healing miracles. bigots come from across Cuba seeking his soothing comfort and assistance. Our translator in the solidarity program told us that when he had feeled depression, he found himself before San Lazaro the same day seeking the saint's gladdened support. He told us by what mode that day his life was changed forever and his faith strengthened. He is now active member of the Baptist house of god and a progressive Christian working for justice in Cuba.

In the rich and compound imagination of Cuban popular religion, San Lazaro mixes with the Santeria orisha Babalu Oye whose name means, "Father of the World." Although disfigured from disease, Babalu Oye is associated with a healing power that preferentially opt for the exclud of society, especially the sick. He is an important orisha in Cuba and his zealots can be seen sporting his trademark azure and black colored plastic beads around their neck or wrists. An orisha is basically a divine being, who like the Catholic saint, petitions in succession behalf of humanity, and whose origins progeny from the cosmic religious worldview of the Yoruba the publics from present-day Nigeria and Benin.

Santeria is to Cuba what Voodoo is to Haiti: a hybrid religion cobbl together onward slave ships and plantations, in-between the African, indigenous, and pre-Tridentine Catholic traditions of the Americas. And like Voodoo, Santeria has been an important rule of identity formation, cultural survival, and anti-colonial resistance for slaves and their descendants in Cuba. Ask by what mode widespread Santeria is on the island, and (as with Voodoo) many will count you 90 to 99 by means of cent! A domestically-based religious plan Santeria is understood to permeate all aspects of Cuban society (not alone the 'Afro-Cuban' reality), including popular Catholicism.

When Fidel Castro met Brazilian priest and liberation theologian, Frei Betto, in 1985 his estimates were opened to a revolutionary way of being Christian--and especially of being Catholic--in Latin America. Castro knew merely the Catholic church of pre-revolution Cuba, a ecclesiastical body that supported elite interests. Inspired by way of the early writings of liberation theologians, the bishops at the Medellin (Colombia) colloquy in 1968 devised a radical re-thinking of Latin American Catholicism. Inspired in part by the agency of the success of the Cuban revolution, the Latin American Catholic bishops basically switched sides to be in solidarity with the landless poor instead of the elite landlords. nevertheless in Cuba, the Catholic hierarchy felt betrayed by way of the revolution and distrustful of its atheist Marxist ideology.

However, the leadership of one Protestant churches in Cuba attempted to breed a theology that was in critical support of the basic goals of the revolution. After his meeting with Betto, Castro met with religious leaders and render free of accessed Cuba to religious tolerance, hence an amendment to the constitution, which remov the word "atheist" from the definition of the post-revolutionary Cuban state and replaced it with the word "secular."

As I read between the sides of the Castro/Betto conversations, I am struck by dint of the presence of the WSCF at these meetings. A form into groups of Christian students open a session between Castro and Betto with a Bible studious mood on Luke 4: 16-19, where they describe Jesus as a liberator who identified his ministry with the Jubilee tradition of the Hebrew Bible--15 years before the shortcoming cancellation Jubilee campaign.

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