Esclavos, patriotas y poetas a la sombra de la cruz: cinco ensayos sobre catolicismo e historia cubana (review)

Esclavos, patriotas y poetas a la sombra de la cruz: cinco ensayos sobre catolicismo e historia cubana. By Manuel P. Maza Miquel, S.J. (Santo Domingo: Centro de Estudios Sociales Padre Juan Montalvo, S.J. 1999. Pp. 266. Paperback.)

Manuel P. Maza Miquel's Esclavos, patriotas y poetas a la sombra de la cruz is a compilation of six articles--not five as the title states--which had been published between 1987 and 1997 in the Dominican journal Estudios Sociales. All but one of the articles relate directly to the history of the Catholic Church in Cuba, ranging in chronological scope from early colonial times to the present. A thought-provoking prologue seeks to provide unity to the volume by outlining five principles which, according to Maza Miquel, have historically characterized the Catholic Church's social and political stances.

The five principles introduced in the book's prologue which are elaborated upon in subsequent chapters are summarized by the author as follows: (1) whenever the Catholic Church has been tied to power, it has endowed the interests it shares with those in power with sacred qualities; (2) the Church, in its attempt to legitimize particular interests, has presented the postures that sustain them as exclusively valid while dismissing dissenting views; (3) the Church's association with power has forced those in opposition to power to combat the Church; (4) whenever the Church has been associated to the ruling classes, the most adequate responses to major challenges have not come from the Church but rather from its adversaries; and (5) throughout Cuba's history, individuals with opposing religious views have oftentimes converged around common social and political agendas.

The book's first chapter is a very useful and balanced overview of the Catholic Church's history in Cuba. The chapter traces the various challenges that the Church confronted during the colonial era: native religious practices; the threat of pirates and filibusterers from Protestant nations; African slavery; and the tensions between the patriotic inclinations of the native clergy and the increasingly pro-Spanish stances of the Catholic Church. Toward the end of the first chapter Maza Miquel provides a very insightful periodization of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Castro government since 1959.

Chapter two focuses exclusively on the subject of the Church and slavery. While this is a useful synthesis of the topic's major themes, it does not offer much in terms of new information or interpretations. This overview of the relations between the colony's official church and the institution of slavery rests exclusively on the views and responses of the Church and its ministers and fails to even approximate the responses of the slaves to the imposition of the Catholic faith. Some mention of Santería and other syncretic religious manifestations would have made for a more comprehensive approach.

Perhaps the book's weakest chapter, "León XIII, José Martí y el Padre McGlynn" (Chapter 4), narrates the process of excommunication and eventual re-establishment of Father Edward McGlynn, a progressive Irish clergyman from the Archdiocese of New York. Using these events as a backdrop, Maza Miquel attempts to argue that the Cuban patriot José Martí recognized the positive side of Catholicism because of his admiration for Father McGlynn. This conclusion does not square with Martí's extensive anticlerical record. Martí may have sympathized with the cleric's progressive views on poverty and other social issues, but it is a mistake to extrapolate that to mean that Martí had any sympathy for the Catholic Church. Martí once stated: "Christianity has died at the hands of Catholicism." He vocally opposed the exploitative and oppressive features of organized religion and aspired to a lay state with a secular educational system for post-independence Cuba and for reduced powers for the Catholic Church. He stated...