Christians are called to be the conscience of their time, to bring eternal principles to society where a Republic can be built. So, if a regime wants to undermine a strong Republic, it must undermine those who are willing to sustain it. The regime needs to conflate spiritual joy with political joy. By subverting the position of those who believe in justice and free elections, the regime achieves political power by eroding the social fabric.
Cuba is an iconic example of that danger that only comes step by step.
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Although it is possible that there will never be a reference from the ruling party in Cuba, since the Revolution claims to be atheistic in the Soviet style and considered religion as a bourgeois remnant, several sources assure that Santeria and spiritualism were a presence in the socialist leadership.
Some of the people closest to Fidel Castro practiced one or the other: René Vallejo, commander of the Rebel Army and his personal doctor; Celia Sánchez, his secretary and close friend; and Haydée Santamaría, anti-Batista fighter and president of the ruling Casa de las Américas until her suicide in 1980.
Fidel Castro’s relationship with Santeria dates back to the first moments of the guerrilla group against Fulgencio Batista in the Sierra Maestra. The writer Richard de Broussard has claimed that the dictator commissioned native santeras from the eastern mountains to make protective talismans for him, his brother, and another select group of his loved ones.
The condition imposed by the santeras is that they return the receipts once the Revolution had triumphed, says Broussard, who interviewed the person in charge of returning the talismans, who is currently outside the Island. Former Cuban officials have confirmed the existence of a specialized body, called Group M, in charge of linking alleged practices of the Cuban political police, who defected in 1995 and gave the FBI a detailed report on the use of hypnosis, parapsychology, and drugs in that Castro military force.
On the other hand, for the American sociologist Juan Clark, it is curious that while religion has been denied access to the mass media since 1960, “the Government, which controls them all, has subtly promoted through the same as Santeria, which lacks a strong moral code.”
In his opinion, this “syncretism between Afro beliefs and Catholicism is presented as the majority religion in Cuba, in a clear effort to undermine traditional Christian denominations.”
Fidel Castro’s official tour of Africa in the 1970s is well known, which took him through countries such as Guinea Bissau, the place from which slaves arrived on the island during Spanish rule. A Largualargua (name given to the oldest priestesses or santeras in Afro-Cuban religions) from Havana remembers him dressed in white and surrounded by babalawos in Nigeria.
The woman told the independent press when Castro died that the dictator was “son of Oddua,” who in Santeria or Regla de Ocha syncretizes with Jesus Christ. Another santero deduced what happened to Oddua “because in the ceremony (...) that was performed for him in Africa there were elephants, in addition to the pieces that he is said to have.” An Iyabó concluded: “Oddua is the overseer of the dead, and so he has had us all, like the living dead.”
Late in his life, Castro also used esotericism to control and influence his allies.
Being a student at the University of Havana, a professor confessed to the class that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) had one or several babalawos for official use. One consulted Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos during a visit to Havana and advised him to avoid air travel. (It is possible that he is referring to a hearing on January 10, 1976, when the Cuban media reported that Fidel Castro had received Torrijos, “Brigade General and Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution,” at the José Martí International Airport, who was beginning an official visit to Cuba.) Torrijos died in a plane crash in 1981.
The most successful case for Castro was that of the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez, who publicly presented himself as Catholic, but who had no qualms about cursing Israel, and in truth lived an intimate relationship with spiritualism.
Knowing this, Castro sent the main leader of 21st century socialism babalawos to “consult him.” In turn, Havana received copious information that facilitated the assault on Venezuelan institutions and the transformation of that South American country into an ideological overseas colony.
