CUBA: Pope Rubs Salt in the Wounds of the Nation

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jan 23 1998 (IPS) - The first mass help by Pope John Paul II in Cuba generated mixed opinions on abortion and divorce but, at the same time, touched on one open wound: the disintegration of the family.

This is “a problem which Cuba has been dealing with for years, the forced separation of families within the country and emigration,” he said to some 100,000 Cubans who attended the mass in Santa Clara, 300 kilometers from Havana.

The material shortages, the lack of satisfaction for ideological reasons, the attraction of the consumer society together with “certain labour or other measures” have torn entire families apart.

“Everyone has an uncle, a brother or a nephew” in the United States, runs a common phrase on the island. Estimates state more than two million Cubans have emigrated since the triumph of the Fidel Castro, in the 1959 revolution.

The emigration issue was excessively politicised in Cuba and for nearly 20 years entire families were profoundly separated by a mere 90 miles – the distance between the island and Miami – but also by an abyss of intolerance which even stopped letters from getting through.

For more than a decade, the Cuban government has been promoting the normalisation of the migratory phenomenon, but those who emigrate do so “for life’ and those who stay know family contact depends on the vicissitudes of the conflict between Havana and Washington.

The psychologist Patricia Ares, of the University of Havana, produced a study which explained the negative effects of family disintegration caused by the submitting of personal relations to political ideals early this decade.

Furthermore, several social scientists have researched the negative consequences resulting from the educating of adolescents in boarding schools, far from their homes.

But although these problems are recognised by the authorities, the Cuban people are not accustomed to seeing them dealt with in public, and even less so with the open and critical focus the Pope gave them Thursday.

“The parents, by giving life to their children, have the grave duty of educating their offspring and, consequently, must be recognised as the first and main educators of their children,” said the pontiff defending the parental right to choose how to educate their children.

This demand for recognition of the parental rights raised the first applause of the mass dedicated especially to the family, while the multitude listened attentively and repectfully to the Papal opinions on divorce, marriage and abortion.

John Paul II defended marriage “with its nature of an exclusive and permanent union,” and stated “the man and the woman have the capacity to give themselves one to the other for ever, without this voluntary and everlasting donation annulling their liberty.”

Similarly, he criticised the presentation of maternity “as a backward move or a limitation on the freedom of the woman” and “the false appearance of liberty and progress” which leads some economic or cultural systems to promote and defend “an anti-birth mentality.”

According to the Cuban Statistics Section, in a country with some 11 million inhaitants, last year there were 65,009 marriages, of which 13,603 were recognised as the “formalisation” of a previous commitment.

Also, there were 41,227 divorces reported in the same period, according to information from the National Office of Statistics.

The divorce rate reached its highest level in 1993, when there were six divorces for every 1,000 inhabitants, while marriages peaked in 1992, with 17.7 per 1,000 people.

The high number of induced abortions, considered a health problem by the experts, reached its most critical point in 1985, when there were 138,671 abortions in the health institutions, and a relation of 83.6 abortions for every 100 births.

In 1996, there were 83,827 abortions in Cuba, according to data from the Ministry of Public Health, 59.4 induced abortions per 100 births, 37.3 of every 100 women pregnant and 25.9 of every 1,000 women aged between 12 and 19 years old.

But while the Pope sees this as the symptoms of a crisis of values which needs to be overcome, many experts consider it part of the evolutionary process of the Cuban family.