216 Chapter 9
The goal of church’s confrontational strategy has been to symbol-
ically align itself with the social opposition while maintaining its inde-
pendence—thus, retaining its status as the only private, independent,
yet politically contentious institution on the island. This, according to
Márquez, means refusing to respond to the pressures of those very
social actors the church has worked to cultivate—at times, in fact,
publicly distancing itself from these social actors when they become
excessively belligerent. Yet, the Varela Project was not in and of itself a
partisan political manifesto but a petition proposing the kind of politi-
cal opening that church leaders have expressed hope for and that
could lead to the development of political pluralism and civil society.
Nevertheless, Oswaldo Payá, a Catholic layman, was forced (according
to church policy) to abandon any pastoral duties done for the church
when he established a political organization, in order to relieve the
church of direct association with the Varela Project or the CLM.
In full knowledge that the church is often charged with not going
far enough into the arena of contentious politics by more extreme and
partisan political dissidents (both in Cuba and in exile) Márquez fur-
ther elaborates the outlook of church leaders: “In other words, pru-
dence is not synonymous with silence and complicity.”^10 Church
officials do not often address politically contentious issues in public,
not because they are complicit with the government but because they
are prudent in their behavior.
Church leaders are willing to encourage their laity to engage in dis-
sident activities, but they have also publicly distanced themselves from
Catholic dissidents who draw the attention of the government. The
closing of the Catholic magazine Vitral in 2007 was a key example of
the kind of self-censorship that has been employed by the church
hierarchy. Dagoberto Valdés, a Catholic dissident, was director of the
Center of Civic and Religious Formation in the Archdiocese of Pinar
del Río and served as the director of Vitral, considered the most polit-
ically contentious of the Catholic publications. Valdés used the Center
- Orlando Márquez, “El Proyecto de la Iglesia,” Palabra Nueva, April 2002.
- ibid.