Indirect Confrontation:The Evolution of the Political Strategy of the Cuban Catholic
to rise up against the government. The invaders also proclaimed the
Catholic nature of their expedition and placed a crucifix on the shoul-
der patches of all the uniforms of the invading forces.
A dispute over permission for a religious procession in August
1961, during which participants (including church officials) shouted
antirevolutionary slogans, erupted in a melee that resulted in the death
of a passing teenager and led to the expulsion of 130 priests and reli-
gious to Spain in 1962. The government concluded that year by expel-
ling all foreign clergy from the country and prohibiting the public
expression of religion. The Cuban Catholic Church had thus earned
its reputation as a vocal, confrontational, oppositional actor in the
first three years of the revolutionary regime. With the nationalization
of education and social services complete and the church stripped of
virtually all its social influence, as well as most of its institutional
resources and human capital, the government settled on an official
policy that Catholics could participate in the building of revolutionary
society as citizens but could not exhibit or proclaim their Catholic
identity.
The Cuban Revolution, rather than transforming the Cuban Cath-
olic Church, reinforced traditional religious policies and behavior,
making the church less open and innovative than most other Latin
American churches. After asserting itself confrontationally during the
first three years of revolutionary rule, the church turned inward and
ceased its confrontational activities. A period characterized by
‘silence,’ tension, and at times ambiguously accommodative relations
ensued between church and state for the first time in Cuban history.
Clergy in Cuba that have remained on the island throughout the
entire span of the revolutionary period remember the 1960s and
1970s as a dark age. Current Auxiliary Bishop of Havana (and mem-
ber of the COCC) Mons. Alfredo Petit Vergel was among a group of
Catholic priests that were taken to military detention camps in the
mid-1960s, along with individuals from other groups deemed socially