Cuban Catholics in the United States, 1960–1980: Exile and Integration (review)

When Fidel Castro entered Havana in January 1959 with elements of his victorious rebel army, the welcoming crowds along the parade route included a contingent from Belen—the elite Jesuit high school where he had once distinguished himself in athletics and student government. When he spotted the Belen banner, Castro reportedly¹¹ climbed down from his tank, embraced priests and students, and kissed the emblazoned symbol of upper-middle-class Cuban Catholicism. Two years later, he would confiscate all private school properties in Cuba, including those of the Jesuits and other Catholic orders. Those and other radical actions helped precipitate a massive migration of Cubans from every social class, beginning in the 1960s and continuing to this day.¹²

Gerald Poyo, in this important book on Cuban Catholics, follows their exodus to the United States and examines the role religion played in their struggle to survive and to maintain a cultural identity. These were migrants who considered themselves refugees—families and individuals pushed from an island where they had once enjoyed living standards superior to those of most Latin American and Caribbean countries. Catholic bishops in exile constantly reminded Cubans of their religious roots, “reasserted the historical contributions of Catholicism in Cuba[,] and argued that the communist imposition represented a deviation from genuine Cuban traditions” (p. 127). The bishops glossed over the fact that the Cuban Catholic hierarchy had supported Spanish rule even during the Cuban struggle for independence.

Poyo documents church programs in the 1940s and 1950s that encouraged political reform and social justice throughout the island, describing two alternate if not competing Catholic models of social change: the populist model of the French-expatriate Christian Brothers of Lasalle versus the eliteled model of Spanish Jesuits who searched for an authoritarian leader to save Cuba from communism as dictator Francisco Franco had rescued Spain. Spanish Jesuit Armando Llorente, the spiritual leader of the Cuban student organization Agrupación Católica Universitaria (ACU), would mentor the adolescent Castro at Belen school and later, when Castro had had taken up arms in the Sierra Maestra, Llorente would encourage other student leaders, such as Manuel Artime, to join Castro in his armed struggle (p. 46). But after Castro had achieved power and then “betrayed” the Church, Llorente, hundreds of priests, and several bishops went into exile. Cuban Jesuits transferred Belen preparatory school to Miami where it prospered as a center of Cuban exile academic excellence and a rallying point for resistance to any accommodation with the Castro regime (p. 94).

At the same time, thousands of Cuban families began to send their children unaccompanied to the United States to escape communist indoctrination, under a clandestine (“Pedro Pan”) program directed by Catholic activist Polita Grau whom the Castro regime eventually arrested and imprisoned (pp. 86, 87, 264). Poyo shows that “the Catholic Church in Miami offered Cubans strong and consistent support” (p. 85). Monsignor Bryan Walsh of the Archdiocese of Miami took charge of the Pedro Pan arrivals and—with significant financial support from the Kennedy administration, Catholic Relief Services, and private corporate donors—found foster homes for them. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy took a special interest in the children of Cuban upper-class families whom he and his siblings had befriended during 1950s vacations at the Dupont estate on Veradero Beach.

Poyo describes how “Cuban-owned or managed radio and television stations (in the U.S.) offered free airtime to priests interested in reaching the broader community. . . . [but the] most important and revered devotional space for south Florida Cuban Catholics was the Ermita de Nuestra Senora de la Caridad del Cobre,” which was a shrine in Miami directed by Cuban priest (and later bishop) Agustin Roman (pp. 104, 105).

During the 1960s and 1970s, as the Vatican and the Catholic hierarchy in Cuba began to explore ways to find a modus vivendi with the...