The Presence of Witness

As the life of Catholic communities was increasingly turning inwards, the struggle to maintain a sense of purpose in the daily revolutionary reality was an ever-present challenge. To this end, a strong emphasis on the internal life and identity of Catholics through spirituality emerged as a primary expression of faith in the late 1960s. In both archival sources and interviews, this dimension of leading a Catholic life in the everyday of the revolutionary reality was often described through the concept of testimonio.

209 See Sierra Madero 2016.

210 AHAH AC JN Raúl Gómez Treto 20.11.1965; AHAH AC JN Queridos hermanos Chacito y Magali 20.11.1965; Interview 28.

211 AHAH AC JN Raúl Gómez Treto 20.11.1965; Interview 28.

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In scholarly discourse, testimonio refers most often either to the Latin American concept of testimonies in political or social contexts or to a genre of testimonial literature, whose origins can also be traced to the experiences of political and social injustice in Latin America.²¹² In studies on revolutionary Cuba, scholarly discussion of testimonio has often been limited to conceptualizing testimony as a literacy genre in the revolution, one consisting mainly of autobiographical works.²¹³ According to Hamilton, “testimonio is an explicitly political form of literature in which the eyewitness recounts her or his life as a part of a collective memory that offers a counter-narrative to official histories.”²¹⁴ The religious and spiritual connotations of the concept in Cuba have neither been acknowledged nor critically analyzed. Yet a rich array of both archival sources and oral histories point towards a distinctively Cuban Catholic understanding of the foundations and use of testimonio as a concept mapping the life of Catholics in the revolution from the 1960s onwards. Very little scholarly work has been conducted on the Catholic concept of testimony in revolutionary Cuba, although it seems to belong to the essential vocabulary of Cuban Catholics for describing their experience in the revolution.

In both individual and collective histories of Cuban Catholics, testimonio surfaces repeatedly as both a concept and an act. In these accounts, apart from the distinctively Latin American and political definition of testimonio, the concept has also deeply rooted origins in Christian tradition. For this study, testimonio carries a dualistic meaning. While it is connected with Christian witness as a theological concept, testimony as a category of historical knowledge is defined as a first-hand account of historical events in the scholarly study of history, such as the oral histories presented in this study.²¹⁵ In Cuba, testimonio as a Catholic concept was frequently used in reference to both testimony and witnessing; the former usually alluded to the social experience of Catholics in the revolution and the latter to the ecclesial vision of Christian witness.

Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, published in 1964, had offered the Cuban Church a theological framework for testimony in its discourse on atheistic communism, again voicing the Church’s strict rejection of it while also promoting further dialogue between the opposing worldviews. Furthermore, the letter had discussed the oppression of Catholics by claiming it was communism and its followers “who are clearly repudiating us, and for doctri-naire reasons subjecting us to violent oppression,” and thus it rejected Marxist teaching.²¹⁶ The

212 Ching, Buckley & Lozano-Alonso 2007, 318.

213 See Carlos Velazco: Cinco recuerdos del porvenir (2019); Casavantes Bradford discusses the testimonios of Grupo Areíto regarding Cuban exile experiences in the United States; Sierra Madero’s work connects testimonio to the discourse about UMAP in Cuban historiography. See Sierra Madero 2016; Casavantes Bradford 2016. See also Chomsky 1994.

214 Hamilton 2012, 9. For a discussion on testimonio as a concept linking with oral history in Cuba, Catholic interpretation excluded, see Hamilton 2012.

215 Testimonies can be used as representations of recollection and remembrance. As such, they may become tools for writing history, particularly among the contemporaries and witnesses of historical events and periods. These histories are often considered marginal, alternative, or in a minority position of either power, representation, or status. Testimonies may be written or oral accounts of the past, but they are testimonies narrated from the present.

They often make use of collective experiences and accounts of the past, drawing on collective memory and becoming a part of it. Simultaneously, testimonies may also be used in building collective accounts of the past, drawing on experiences shared by the group, although most often narrated by individuals in their testimonies. See Nance 2006; Lackey & Sosa 2010.

216 Ecclesiam Suam 6.8.1964; Fejérdy 2016, 110-112.

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Cuban Church had found resonance with the Pope’s affirmation that instead of dialogue with the oppressor, “the only witness that the Church can give is that of silence, suffering, patience, and unfailing love, and this is a voice that not even death can silence.”²¹⁷ Although Pope Paul VI also encouraged continued dialogue with communist regimes,²¹⁸ it was not considered pos-sible in Cuba at the time, as only the frameworks of silent testimony seemed to resonate with the Cuban experience. The discourse on testimonio thus shows how the Holy See’s vision of diplomacy in communist countries and the Cuban interpretation of Ostpolitik never fully met in the 1960s.

In 1965, with a direct reference to Vatican II, Father Alfredo Petit Vergel called on “each layperson to bear witness in this world of the resurrection and life of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”²¹⁹ As both Cuban archival sources and scholarly work on Vatican II discuss, the call to witness also linked the Cuban Church to both a conciliar understanding of the role of the Church in the modern world and to the recognition of the laity’s role globally.²²⁰ Witnessing to Christ was understood as a task bestowed upon both the clergy and religious orders as well as the laity as part of the Church’s universal mission:

Now more than ever, in the supernatural light of the ecumenical council that ended its sessions, we in the laity feel united in the apostolic spirit, into which we have been called by our Holy Mother the Church.

This is why, while celebrating Christmas, we must contribute with our prayer and testimony of unity to presenting Christ to the world. Let us unite in service and in action, so that we might bring into practice in joyful dynamics and brotherly adhesion the decisions emanating from the council.²²¹

Further connecting these global currents to Cuba, female leaders of Havana’s laity wrote: “To-day, the Church in the council revises its stance on the laity and intends to move it towards life of active witness.”²²² As the excerpt suggests, witness as a religious concept both connected the Catholic community to the universal Church and distinguished it from global Catholicism by an emphasis on the context in which the distinctive Cuban vision of Christian witness grew. As a Cuban Catholic concept, testimonio referred specifically to the life of the Church in the gins, and therefore it dates to the years following the revolutionary policies that aimed at mar-ginalizing the Church through a lack of resources and civic visibility. As a result of these activ-ities and manifestations of perseverance, the Church began to employ the concept of testimony to describe its modus operandi. Archival sources show that testimonio as an act was employed in reference to both periods of hardship and processes of recovery from it in the latter half of the 1960s.

217 Ecclesiam Suam 6.8.1964; VC Actualidad Católica 4.10.1964; VC Actualidad Católica 11.10.1964.

218 Fejérdy 2016, 112.

219 AHAH AC JD La Habana Querido Hermano en el Sacerdocio by Alfredo Petit Vergel, sin fecha.

220 For instance, AHAH AC JN Raúl Gómez Treto to Teresa de Rojas 30.9.1965; AHAH AC JN Raúl Gómez Treto to Emilio Roca Notó 30.9.1965; AHAH AC JN Raúl Gómez Treto to Carlota Vidaud 7.10.1965; Alberigo 1995, 42.

221 Hoy más que nunca, a la luz sobrenatural del Concilio Ecuménico que acaba de terminar sus sesiones, los laicos nos sentimos unidos en el espíritu apostólico, al cual hemos sido llamados por nuestra Santa Madre la Iglesia.

Por ello, aprovechando estas Navidades debemos contribuir con nuestra oración y testimonio de unidad a presentar ante el mundo a Cristo --. Unámos pues, en la plegaria y en la acción, a fin de que podamos llevar a la práctica con gozoso dinamismo y filial adhesión las decisiones emanadas del Concilio. AHAH AC JN Junta Diocesana de Acción Católica to Curas Párrocos, Rectores de Iglesias, Ramas de Acción Católica, Asociaciones del Apostolado Seglar, Navidad 1965.

222 AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín: Iglesia.

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As a concept constantly repeated in the interviews, testimonio paradoxically referred to both silent endurance and public profession of Catholic faith. The concept of testimonio appeared in discourses reminiscing about the first decades of the revolution, after the marginalization of the Church in the revolutionary society and the first experiences of living in the margins as Catholics.²²³ The interviewees most commonly made reference to such testimonies as the “testimony of everyday life”²²⁴ and “silent testimony.”²²⁵ Members of the ecclesial hierarchy, the clergy, religious orders, and the laity alike mention the era of the late 1960s as a time of “giving a testimony in silence.”²²⁶ These silent testimonies consisted of not only conducting testimonial acts, but also of being a testimony in one’s personality and life.

Being a testimony was equal to a testimony of faith and spirituality through everyday life and experience. One oral history summarized the testimony of presence by highlighting “the importance of being witnesses; that one has to be present in every place”;²²⁷ it entailed a sense of being present and representing Catholicism and the Church through more than actions alone.

That, in turn, problematized the very understanding of testimonio: while it was seen as silence, it did not amount to absence. This conceptual distinction has not always been acknowledged in scholarly work, and the historiographical knowledge produced by the revolution has treated them synonymously.

Both documental and oral sources suggest that testimonies were sometimes considered personal characteristics of being Catholic, like in the case of Pérez Serantes, the archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, who others described as the “enormous living testimony of wisdom and love, that is the archbishop” ²²⁸ and a “living and humble testimony of love and divine kindness.” ²²⁹ In this sense, characteristic testimonies were also signs of resistance and endurance. In an individual’s life, testimony corresponded to “a transcendent understanding of life and its missionary work.”²³⁰ Testimony was expected from laity as a sign of commitment to the community as both a collective act and a feature of communitarian life. The testimony of everyday life was fulfilled in local communities, through active participation and public manifestations of faith. As such, testimonies also built cohesion in communities and served to reinforce the collective identity of local communities through everyday expressions of commitment and loyalty. On a global scale, Cuban Catholics saw their personal and collective testimonies embedded in the universal church, which consisted of both present and past generations of believers bearing witness to a transcendent presence in human lives.²³¹

The understanding of testimonio as a collective framework of spirituality transformed its

223 For instance, Interview 2; Interview 5; Interview 7.

224 Testimonio de la vida cotidiana. Interview 12.

225 Testimonio del silencio. Interview 3.

226 Dando un testimonio en silencio. Interview 2.

227 La importancia de ser testigos, qua había que estar presente en todos lugares. Interview 14.

228 Ese enorme testimonio vivo de la Sabiduría y el Amor, que es el Arzobispo. AHAH AC JN Raúl Gómez Treto to Emilio Roca Notó 13.12.1965.

229 Testimonio vivo y sensible del amor y la bondad divina. AHAH AC JN Raúl Gómez Treto to Enrique Pérez Serantes 25.11.1965.

230 La visión sobrenatural de su vida y su acción evangelizadora. AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín No 5. Enero 1965 Plan de Trabajo para 1965.

231 AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín No 5. Enero 1965 Plan de Trabajo para 1965; AHAH AC JD La Habana Proyecto de la comisión para el plan de trabajo de la Junta Nacional de Acción Católica Cubana; AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín: Iglesia; AHAH AC JN Memorandum 3.10.1965.

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nature also towards that of witnessing. For the Cuban Church, Christian witness was a manifestation of the missionary spirit within the restrictive frameworks of the revolution.

Ultimately, it was an act translated from the internal to the external, directed from the Church outwards. Cuban laity were encouraged to “give a testimony” as witnesses of faith and Christian life not only for the Church but for Cuban society in general, for Cubans outside the Church, and inevitably, for the outside world on the nature of Catholicism in Cuba. Catholics in Cuba could not witness in isolation, for “the world of today is anxious for unity in every way: in international agreements, regional groups, in the fight for demolishing inequality of peoples, races and social classes; therefore the world expects from us Christians a collective witness.”

232

Correspondingly, testimonio in the Cuban context served to reinforce narratives of perseverance, resistance, and ultimately, remembrance of the Church in the revolutionary reality. These testimonies were recognized and treated as testimonies by the community itself, and in this manner, the idea of testimonio in fact resonated with the definition provided by Hamilton. Serving as first-person accounts of the past, testimonies also brought forth the elements of lived religion, everyday experiences, and grassroots religiosity that do not place focus solely on the Church as an institution, but also as a living organism comprising individuals leading lives in which faith, religiosity, and spirituality are embedded as small traces, quotidian acts, sets of values, morals, and ideals in dialogical relation with each other.

As such, everyday testimonies responded to the challenge of evangelizing in post-Vatican II Catholicism. Ultimately, testimony was considered a duty of Catholics as a sign of God’s work and Christ in the world. According to the study materials, a Christian should, through their testimony, “make Christ present in their little world.” In this manner, a Cuban believer was “a testimony of Christ.”²³³ In individual lives, it was instrumental to “give an authentic testimony,”

“a testimony with a true sense of charity.”²³⁴ This testimony of love, “alive and convincing,”

was to turn the eyes of the surrounding society to the Church, looking “at them and the love they embody.”²³⁵ This understanding of testimony as simultaneously private and shared, intimate and public, resonated with both the universal Catholic Church and individual Catholics. In Cuba, it also allowed believers space for religious meaning-making, for their personal histories, life trajectories, and emotional experiences in the revolutionary reality.

When testimonies were constructed within Catholic communities as symbols of the continuity and presence of the Church, laypeople were appointed to carry out a particular role of transferring and transforming religiosity through individual lives and personal stories.²³⁶

232 El mundo de hoy está ansioso de unidad en todos los medios: acuerdos internacionales, agrupaciones regionales, lucha por la disminución de diferencias entre todos los hombres, razas y clases sociales; y por lo tanto lo que este mundo exige de nosotros los cristianos es un testimonio comunitario. AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín No 7. Septiembre 1965.

233 AHAH AC JF La Habana El Equipo Apostólico.

234 AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín No 5. Enero 1965 Plan de Trabajo para 1965; AHAH AC JF CN Formación J.F.A.C.C. Consejo Nacional, Secretariado de Formación: Guía para la preparación de socias y grupos provinciales 1965.

235 AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín: Iglesia.

236 The Catholic concept of testimonio and its use within the ecclesial community in Cuba can also be contested from within. As testimonies are not universal but rather individual, their nature in the construction of narratives and normativity raises critical questions. Which testimony corresponds with the interpretation shared with others – or does any? What are the boundaries of collectively accepted and reinforced testimonies, and are there particular

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Through the presence of Catholics, testimony also carried a missionary dimension: it was a task appointed to the Church by Christ. This brought forth the transcendent dimension of testimony and witnessing as Christians, while also highlighting the strength of the community and its cohesion arising from unanimous testimony.²³⁷ “[The community] cannot be a closed community,” emphasized the lay leaders, directing the concept of testimonio towards a more communitarian interpretation.²³⁸

Both testimonio and witness were also responsibilities of the laity. Just as Cuban revolutionaries were asked to continuously manifest their faith in and commitment to the revolution, through testimony in their personal life Catholics were to offer a solemn, unceasing presence of a contesting social reality. Testimonio was reinforced as a task bestowed upon all generations of Cuban Catholics: even teenagers were taught the meaning and expectation of testimony in their Catholic education.²³⁹ For Catholic youth, personal commitment to the Christian faith was presented as a prerequisite for a “living and convincing” testimony: “It is impossible to offer an authentic testimony that prevails, most importantly, in the face of obstacles, if one does not have a close, living friendship with Christ.”²⁴⁰ Also, laywomen were led to ask themselves, “Am I able to give to my sisters and brothers, with my testimony, a well-covering and enthusiastic vision of the Church?” ²⁴¹ These examples suggest that witnessing was also an unconditional requirement for lay participation. “Timid, mediocre Christians” not offering a living testimony of Christ and a Christian lifestyle within the revolutionary reality were considered complacent in their state of disgrace.²⁴² Gómez Treto further proposed that for some, witnessing was transformed into a “readiness to avoid taking part in the revolution by not participating in social organizations and mass undertakings,” also accepting the consequences of resistance.²⁴³

The lay leaders of the women’s Catholic Action group reminded their members of the duty of all militants to “give a Christian testimony all of the time and in all places, not only with one’s attitude but also with her presence and personal attire (for example, on the beach).”²⁴⁴ In this manner, visible signals of loyalty to the Church were required even in the most quotidian of revolutionary circumstances. Additionally, numerous examples suggest that witnessing was treated as a spiritual act in daily life. For instance, in 1965 young female adults in Catholic communities in Havana were offered an example of witnessing through imitating the Virgin Mary in the virtues of her life. At the same time, they were asked to engage in a critical revision of their lifestyles as young women, and to exchange experiences with their peers also on

non-topics for testimonies? How have the testimonies evolved in the revolutionary period, and how have they shaped the community’s perception and interpretation of itself?

237 AHAH AC JF La Habana El Equipo Apostólico; AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín: Iglesia; AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín No 5. Enero 1965 Plan de Trabajo para 1965.

238 AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín: Iglesia.

239 AHAH AC JF La Habana Boletín: Iglesia.

240 Ofrezca un testimonio viviente y convencido - - es imposible dar un testimonio auténtico y sobre todo permanecer con esa ilusión frente a los obstáculos, si no se tiene una amistad entrañable y viva con Cristo. AHAH

240 Ofrezca un testimonio viviente y convencido - - es imposible dar un testimonio auténtico y sobre todo permanecer con esa ilusión frente a los obstáculos, si no se tiene una amistad entrañable y viva con Cristo. AHAH

In document Never a Church of Silence : The Catholic Church in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-1986 (sivua 171-185)