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Divine duel in Havana
It's so magical a moment that even Gabriel Garcia Marquez is there, with his reporter's notepad. Two patriarchs in their autumnal splendour, die-hard apostles of two clashing faiths, both John Paul II and Fidel Castro are engaged in the most defining transcendental missions of this century. It seems even Marquez, whose pages are crowded with oversized images of men, is modest enough to realise that only the craft of reporting, not the art of fiction, can capture the papal visit to Cuba. But modesty is certainly not a revolutionary trait, and both the pope and the comandante are revolutionaries, tired and ageing, but strong enough for a last struggle. John Paul II, Christ's vicar, has already earned a place in history as an extraordinary political activist of this century. In his pursuit of a kingdom of justice, hope and truth, this fragile old man had taken on quite a few dictators. And it was his crusade against the rival faith, communism, that made this pope the Holy Father of Demolition in the thriller of
'89 -- it all started with his pilgrimage to the homeland in 1979. The mission is not over: he is busy building a moral alternative to the societies liberated from communism. He yearns for compassionate capitalism, for a new moral order in a spiritually stagnant world.A plot that runs parallel to Fidel's lonely struggle. Castro, yesterday's romantic hero, perhaps the most charismatic Latin American liberator since Simon Bolivar, is today a solitary champion of a dead ideology. In the island of day before, he is the victim (of history plus "Yanquee conspiracy") as well as the last action hero of a faith which is as ambitious and transcendental as the pope's. But Castro, whose desperation has given partial economic and religious freedom to the masses, is welcoming the chief of world Catholicism in the full paraphernalia of victimhood. "O, the Most Merciful, provider of hope and apostle of truth, do the beautiful people of Cuba deserve this eternal punishment? O, the Compassionate One, this imperialist
embargo goes against the holy tenets of social justice. Speak up Father, your words are our salvation" -- Castro's script for the papal visit may go something like this. A propaganda coup by the Politburo: John Paul II as a dictator's last salvo against the imperialists next-door. The script of this purely pastoral visit of the pope will be written by neither the host nor the guest but the millions on the streets. The cathartic eruption in Cuba, with poignant episodes of homecoming, cannot be an endorsement of the tyranny of Fidel's faith. Rather, it is a multitudinous display of raw, elemental faith triumphing over enforced faith. For Castro, these people are an abstraction, an elastic abstraction that is permanently subordinated to the maximo lider's self-serving fantasies. In truth, they are the victims of Castro: he has the bunker, they have nothing. Embargo is a slogan, and it needs some courage in the imperialist to deny this redundant hero the benefit of this last slogan. For the moment, let
the pope sermonise the Cubans that the theology of liberation is not always written by the bearded Jehovahs of a false religion. Wasn't there Gdansk before Havana?
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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