On July 11, 2021, in Cuba, thousands of people of all kinds took to the streets with various demands. It was the greatest display of the power of civil society ever seen in this totalitarian country, where the socialist state tries to control its citizens as much as possible.

It is impossible to know exactly who the demonstrators were, but some of them are part of the growing community of evangelical and Protestant Christians who, according to a 2015 survey, represent around 7% of the population.

Methodist pastor Carlos Macias was stuck with two dilemmas in that day of large anti-system demonstrations in Cuba. The first was related to his vocation: “To be a pastor of a historic denomination like the Methodist Church, under the stigma that Christians do not participate in politics, and at the same time to want to exercise my civil rights and freedoms as a citizen,” he said in an interview.

The other dilemma was “between the need to express (himself) and make use of freedom of thought” and “the fear of the consequences that this could have on a personal level.” In another time, the pastor might have opted for self-censorship, for staying at home as so many Cubans have always done. But that July 11, 2021, known as “11J,” something seemed to change.

In the battered streets of Jovellanos, Matanzas Province, a crowd chanted for freedom. The same was happening in more than 60 other places all over the country. Macias and his eldest son left their house church to join in. He understands that as a religious leader, it is not his mission to call for a protest. But as a believer, of course, he recognizes “the right to participate in a demonstration demanding justice.”

Growing tension

Tensions between some of the leaders of the evangelical community and the state have increased over the past three years. Since 2018, the main Protestant churches have been demanding more independence from state organizations that try to control them or do not recognize them as having legal status.

They had also strongly rejected Cuban government mandates — such as the Comprehensive Sexuality Education Program, with its focus on gender, sexual and reproductive rights — and the promotion of same-sex marriage, demanding the right to live and educate their children according to their religious principles and beliefs.

Although clashes with the state and acts of punishment or intimidation of these churches had multiplied since then, they had not escalated to the point where a large number of pastors were imprisoned for days, weeks or months — until 11J came along.

On that day, Macias and other Protestant leaders who had never before taken to the streets to protest, did so. They joined thousands of other citizens who had also never demonstrated before. And this time, the religious leaders did not demonstrate only for the above reasons — they joined as part of a population demanding food and medicine and, above all, shouting, “Freedom!”

Since then, a persecution has been unleashed against some pastors that continues to this day and has contributed to an increasing number of religious leaders and churches questioning police repression or speaking out against the government.

Protestants were, in fact, the religious group with the most leaders repressed as a result of 11J, according to a tally by the group Justicia 11J, which compiles an inventory of the arrests and legal proceedings being suffered by those who demonstrated on that day

Subsequently, in late August, another community leader, who had been openly critical of the government and shared images of the 11J protests on social media, was also captured and prosecuted.

In all these cases, the pastors were not detained as part of larger groups. Either the authorities were waiting for them in their homes or churches, or they were taken from the crowd.

Although they all went out as individuals, without inciting their congregations to demonstrate, they received the same treatment as other civil society leaders or more overtly political opponents: arrest and criminal prosecution.

“The government views religious groups as the largest independent civil society sector and fears their potential to mobilize large groups of people,” said a source inside Christian Solidarity Worldwide, an international organization that promotes religious freedom. They asked not to be identified because of CSW’s work in Cuba.

“The involvement of believers and some religious leaders in the 11J protests fed the government’s paranoia,” the source added. “The government wants exemplary cases to show other religious leaders what the consequences will be if they don’t follow the rules.”

The case of Carlos Macías

Macias recalled how on that day, “everyone said what they wanted to say: basically despair and disagreement with what is happening.

“Many people, almost 1,500 people of different ages, began to walk peacefully through the streets of Jovellanos,” he explained in a video shared on social media.

According to his testimony, in the protest, “there was no violence on the part of the demonstrators.” However, that did not prevent “a group of Cuban government sympathizers and plainclothes officers” from entering the rally to try to arrest him and his son.

“They insulted us, blasphemed us and called us dogs,” the pastor said. “They were trying to destabilize us mentally. They were looking for strife.”

Macias recalled that someone in the middle of the crowd shouted, “They want to take the pastor away!”

“Part of the people intervened and thwarted the arrest,” Macias said. “That’s when we understood that we had to get out of the chaos that was emerging in the place and return with my wife and my youngest son.”

After Macias returned, the church house was guarded by members of the Interior Ministry. Macias was warned that if he left, he would be imprisoned. He was under house arrest without charge.

Macias had previously spoken out against abuses of the state through teachings and social media posts. When San Isidro Movement artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara went on hunger strike in April 2021, he expressed his solidarity on social media. So it was natural for him to take to the streets on 11J.

In a video on his Facebook account, Macias said, “Today I had the honor of participating in a spontaneous demonstration. I want to say that no one here was paid a penny to participate.

“Diaz-Canel, a president I did not elect, in the framework of these demonstrations called for bloodshed, for confrontation, and he will be responsible for every drop of blood of Cubans who are wounded or die in the attempt.

“The time has come to speak out, which is dangerous because we live in a dictatorship. But I don’t think we can stand it any longer. In Cuba we have dignified Cubans who are not willing to keep silent to please a family (The Castros).”

Macias’ motivation, he said, was not due to “political or ideological reasons” but “Biblical, theological and doctrinal principles related to freedom and truth.”

Imprisoned in his house, Macias lived the hours as if inside a large drop of amber. The heat and the uncertainty of what would happen to him and his family slowed down time, he said.

Meanwhile, Ricardo Pereira, a Methodist bishop, contacted the authorities in person to lobby for Macias’ release. After two days in detention, the pastor was summoned to the Jovellanos police station. Several plainclothes and uniformed officers threatened him with reprisals if he demonstrated publicly again, and the house arrest was lifted.

A few days later, the board of directors of the Methodist Church published a statement on the church’s social networks with unusually direct language critical of the government. In it, the church said it rejected “the repressive manner used against the demonstrating population.”

“Cuba ought to be a free and sovereign country, where all their children are respected, both those who support the revolution, as those who do not sympathize with the sociopolitical system,” the church said.

Other large churches issued similar statements. The Pentecostal Assemblies of God directly questioned Diaz Canel, blaming him for the violence that occurred on 11J.

“A government that proclaims the inclusion of all citizens must have the wisdom to promote dialogue and not confrontation,” the statement said. “We believe that slogans devoid of peace and sanity will not resolve the situation in which the country finds itself, but rather destine the nation to total chaos and destruction.”

Rodriguez and Salazar

Silence is the loudest noise in Cuba, but Adelys Rodriguez broke it when her husband, pastor Yeremi Blanco, was arrested during the 11J protests in Matanzas. She found out at 7 p.m. that Sunday. Claudia Salazar, wife of another pastor, Yarian Sierra, contacted Rodriguez to let her know that Sierra was also in prison.

Rodriguez left her three children with Salazar’s, and both went out to look for their husbands in the city’s police stations. No one gave them any information. “They treated us as if we were dogs — that we had no right to anything,” she said after their first marathon through police stations.

The next day, they found out at the provincial delegation of the Interior Ministry that their husbands were in a section specially prepared for the hundreds of 11J detainees in the city’s women’s prison. At the entrance to the penitentiary, Rodriguez and Salazar waited for hours for an answer. Rodriguez recalled, in tears, that senior officials said their husbands were going to be there for 7 to 14 days.

Blanco and Sierra are pastors of the Christian denomination Bereana Mission, present in Cuba since the 1940s but outlawed after its property was confiscated under Castrosim in 1960. Today, its members congregate in their own homes or rented houses.

Although the Cuban state has stopped calling itself officially atheist — as it did for decades — in the 1990s and has since tolerated the practice of religion, it still tries to control and limit the operation of religious organizations as much as possible.

The current law on associations, which protects the operation of churches, excludes the recognition of groups whose purpose is similar to that of an already registered group. This allows the state to deny registration to churches with doctrines similar to those of others already recognized. Only 55 legal Protestant denominations, mostly established before 1959, escape this rule.

From these historic churches have emerged some pastors, such as Baptist Raul Suarez, who support the Cuban government. There are also other leaders who have kept their political distance — not cooperating and trying to interact as little as possible with the state but not openly confronting it.

On the other hand, there are faith groups that the state refuses to recognize, such as the network of more than 50 churches and thousands of members of the Apostolic Movement or the Berean Mission, to which Blanco and Sierra belong.

Often, it is these unrecognized churches that have experienced the greatest violations of their rights: demolition of churches, arrests of leaders or coercion of membership, as exposed in a 2020 report by CSW.

Perhaps for this reason, and with nothing to lose, the pastors of these congregations have been more outspoken than those of the registered associations. Leaders such as Apostle Yoel Demetrio from Las Tunas refer to the state as dictatorial or openly denounce abuses against civil society, for example.

However, this division between recognized and nonregistered churches began to close in 2018, when they made their institutional position and that of their parishioners known during the final drafting of the new Magna Carta.

At that time, 45 denominations demanded respect for basic individual rights, such as freedom of conscience, freedom of the press and private property, among others. Although the general rejection of Article 68 of the communist constitution — which changed the view of marriage from a union exclusively between a man and a woman — catalyzed the alliance of Protestant churches in an unprecedented campaign in Cuban civil society, this was only one of the 16 articles about which there were complaints or opposition.

Protestant leaders said they would vote against the Magna Carta, opposing the government’s campaign for yes votes.

In addition, several religious organizations, including the Methodist Church to which Macias belongs, organized a national civic campaign that included collecting signatures and even calling for a March for the Family, which the state banned.

The authorities reacted to the challenge posed by religious organizations. From then on, several Protestant leaders, including those of recognized churches, began to face more summons, threats and prohibitions from leaving the country.

Tensions increased in 2019, when the largest denominations opposed to the constitution formed an organization outside the state: the Alliance of Evangelical Churches. This constituted a direct challenge to the state-friendly Council of Churches of Cuba. The creators of the alliance, in fact, openly declared that they did not feel represented by the council and have not yet succeeded in having the organization legalized.

In the interview granted for this report, the CSW source stated that the creation of the alliance “was a show of unity not seen among the Protestant churches since 1959.”

Since then, the council has been losing members, highlighting the deterioration of church-state relations. Today, less than half of the country’s 55 legal Protestant associations belong to the organization.

Shortly before 11J, the Pentecostal and Reformed Christian Churches canceled their membership. This act of protest occurred because of the implementation of the Comprehensive Sexuality Education Program in the state education system, which generated a new clash with the state and a rejection among the majority of Protestant churches.

At that time, Blanco spoke out for the preferential right of parents to choose the type of education for their children. In a May 2021 post, he said he did not like politics but lamented that “the government strictly controls education” and that “there are no private schools and home schooling is not allowed.”

He denounced the “communist system, which has filled its mouth with saying that human rights are not violated in Cuba,” saying, “In the mouths of those who feed like parasites on a system that profits them to a lesser or greater extent, we are the perfect country.”

For him and Sierra, both members of an outlawed church, the most open opposition to the government had been coming since at least 2019. That year, Sierra shared on social media a complaint about the expropriation of a building of the Nazarene Church.

That same year, shortly before, Blanco took part in a protest at Holguin airport, after state-owned Cuban Aviation canceled a flight and customers complained of mistreatment by officials.

For all these reasons, as happened to Macias, it was natural for Blanco and Sierra to go out and demonstrate in the streets of Matanzas when they saw on social networks that thousands of people were doing so on July 11. As Sierra’s wife, Salazar, explained, both protested because they “abhorred communism.”

Blanco and Sierra, unlike Macias, were unable to escape imprisonment. When their wives were able to locate them, they demanded that the authorities allow them to make a phone call. They were told there was no telephone in the prison. The next day, they said there was no call because the pastors had refused to share their telephone numbers. “Our husbands wouldn’t keep us in anguish, not knowing their whereabouts,” Rodriguez said.

They were “practically kidnapped,” Salazar posted on Facebook, criticizing the authorities: “Even the health protocols were violated because they only allowed them to give them three face masks, and they have been detained for more days.” To deliver medication to Blanco, who was recovering from COVID-19, they had to get a prescription because the jail wouldn’t authorize it.

Salazar was told that Blanco and Sierra would be prosecuted for public scandal, but “they neither assaulted anyone, nor destroyed anything,” she replied.

Meanwhile, their detention caused outrage among members of the Protestant community, including Holguin pastor Jatniel Perez Feira, who criticized the arbitrary arrests of protesters on his social media accounts. Shortly after speaking out, Feira claimed to have received anonymous calls to intimidate him.

“I think you know Pastor Lorenzo, who is now a prisoner in Boniato (a jail in Santiago de Cuba). I just wanted to apologize because I was one of the guards who urinated on his head in the early morning of July 14 when we were transferring him to Versalles (a police unit in the same province). We had no water, and we thought we had killed him from the beating we gave him on the way.”

That was the first message that arrived last October on the Facebook Messenger of Mario Felix Lleonart, a Cuban Baptist pastor exiled in Washington and the director of the Patmos Institute, which monitors religious freedom.

Lleonart’s phone rang again. The stranger confessed that he did not want to abuse Lorenzo, but if he did not participate, he said, “the dead man would be me.” Another buzz: “They’re here to kill the pastor so that he doesn't tell everything that has been done to him.” The communication ended in a chilling manner: “Any day now, another prisoner will kill him, or he will appear to have committed suicide.”

Lleonart has a long history as a religious critic of the Cuban government. Recently, he was one of the promoters of the creation of the Association of Unregistered Cuban Churches, a new Protestant organization that emerged after 11J and was set up outside Cuba.

In its first communiqué, AICNOR was blunt. It underlined “the people’s legitimate right to peaceful demonstration” and described the Cuban government as “a totalitarian state that encourages violence.”

AICNOR is, perhaps, so far the most belligerent Protestant formation to emerge in the country. Although some of its members, such as Lleonart, are outside the island, several Cuban churches, such as the Berean Mission and the Apostolic Movement have joined the organization.

After years of tensions between religious structures and the state, the emergence of AICNOR is evidence that after 11J, a period of greater hostility has begun.

In an interview for this report, Lleonart said that the organization “was already in the making, but it crystallized and was forced to come to the fore, forced by circumstances. … If it hadn’t been for 11J, the process leading up to the public announcement would have taken longer. But 11J served as a catalyst.”

One of AICNOR’s first activities was fighting for the release of Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo, the pastor imprisoned in Boniato who was mentioned in the messages Lleonart received.

Fajardo is a pastor of the Mount of Sion Church in Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba, who remains imprisoned at the time of this publication for having participated in the 11J demonstrations, along with hundreds of other neighbors.

Fajardo is one of at least 708 people still being held for participating in the protests, according to the most recent count by the group Justicia 11J.

Fajardo had frequently clashed with the authorities. In fact, he was superintendent of the registered Open Bible Church, from which he was expelled under pressure from the Communist Party’s Office of Religious Affairs, according to information provided by the Patmos Institute.

Later, he founded his current church in the east of the country, although he did not succeed in registering it. Lleonart believes that what happened to Fajardo reveals a pattern of how the Communist Party pressures established associations to purge uncomfortable leaders, pushing them into illegality.

“Lorenzo has been in a vulnerable situation for 10 years, and that is why they can now take it out on him,” Lleonart said.

There are photographs of his arrest on 11J showing two uniformed men restraining him. One, from the National Revolutionary Police, appears to be holding the pastor’s hands behind his back, perhaps to handcuff him. Another, from the Special Brigade, younger and wearing a black beret, is holding Fajardo’s neck in the V-shaped bend of his arm and forearm.

Maridilegnis Carballo, Fajardo’s wife, saw this pixelated image after the four-day internet blackout imposed by the state following the protests. Neither her husband nor their son David had returned home. The 17-year-old had been missing for almost a week before being released. The father was not to be seen for about 100 days.

David recounted that they were both in a “cubicle totally enclosed by bars” and a padlocked door. The cold of the night and the harsh summer sun came in, accentuating the stench of the bathroom. “We were several days without water — they gave us little to drink,” he said after leaving on a bail in cash. Mosquitoes and gnats made the confinement crueler.

The biggest worry now was for Fajardo. He had not taken his blood pressure pills, and his wife was denied information about his condition, as well as the possibility of visiting him in the Versalles police unit.

At the end of July, the case investigator informed Carballo that her husband would not receive any visits or calls. Only on that date was she able to leave him some toiletries and medication to control his blood pressure.

The six months of detention have passed with only two visits, one on Oct. 16 and the other on Oct. 28, which David was also able to attend. “I can’t tell you he’s well — he’s skinny,” the teenager said. “You know what prison life is like and the atrocities they do.”

On leaving the first of these meetings, Carballo commented that her lawyer had called her to inform her of the prosecutor’s request: “Ten years for the crimes of instigation to commit a crime, contempt of court and attempted murder.”

In December, Fajardo’s trial finally took place. According to what the lawyer told his wife, the authorities were expected to hand down the sentence around Jan. 16.

Carballo said that the witnesses presented at the trial were mostly police officers.

“They told a story that was not what we really saw and experienced that day,” the woman said in an audio recording. “They attributed to the detainees all the violence, intentions to vandalize, to deprive of life. …The prosecution witnesses said that they felt fear and terror because the people went with sticks, stones and bottles, but that is not true.

“My husband is innocent. His actions on that day have nothing to do with the crimes of which they are accused.”

Blanco and Sierra

In prison, Sierra told himself, “I cannot falter.” His cellmates in the South Combine, he wrote, needed a message of hope, one that “transcends even the bars of a prison and breaks the chains and shackles not only of the body, but rather of the soul.”

Disenfranchised and incommunicado, Sierra saw in what he suffered a purpose. “Almost every night, some curious topic from the Bible would come up that someone was interested in, and that’s when the debate would begin,” the man recounted.

During his days in detention, both he and Blanco were denied Bibles. Even so, one verse after another came to Sierra’s mind, despite his poor memory. And he did not forget the emotion of 11J.

Aside from what his flesh might suffer, the condition of his wife, Salazar, and their seven-year-old son was Sierra’s biggest concern each day of confinement. He didn’t know it, but Salazar and the boy had been evicted from the house where they lived. Now the church meeting place would also be their roof.

When he thought of them, he didn’t believe he would see them, “at least not for a long time.” Sierra confessed that he endured those days because while his body was imprisoned, his free soul and mind constantly returned to some biblical text or ancient hymn.

“Every centimeter of those four walls reminded me of Christ — every little detail had its parallel to the spiritual life,” he recounted. On each of the five bars of the gate, he used to imagine, engraved, the five pillars of the Protestant Reformation: “Scripture alone, Faith alone, Grace alone, Christ alone, to God alone be the Glory.” And on the 14th day of his imprisonment, almost at nightfall, the military informed him that he would await trial under house arrest.

The barred gate opened, but his “heart was strangely confused.” On the one hand, he remembered that he was joyful. On the other, he was “sad for those he was leaving behind in that cell.”

Sierra walked alone to the prison exit. He meditated on what he had experienced, until he saw a pastor friend and Blanco in the distance. He too was being released at that point.

In the following days, especially when he was praying over food, the faces of the unfortunate ones, whom nobody knew but him and their families, came back to Sierra’s mind. “Tears came to my eyes.”

When he and Blanco arrived at the congregation’s meeting place, there was a group of friends there. “We felt in their embrace, the embrace of Christ himself and of all those who wanted to have been there but for other reasons could not,” Sierra said.

Upon leaving the South Combine, Sierra learned of the eviction of his wife and son and wept. Not even hearing the prosecutor’s accusation for him and Blanco affected him as much.

Fifty kilometers (31 miles) to the south, in Jovellanos, Macias visited relatives of those imprisoned for 11J. His discoveries helped map the national repression of the state. He also considers that kind of work as pastoral work. He has offered counseling and accompaniment to the loved ones of Felix Navarro and Sissi Abascal, well-known pro-democracy activists, and others detained in the protests.

But it has not all been easy. The family of a teenage prisoner asked Macias not to visit them anymore, as they returned to him a financial help he had offered from his own pocket. He later learned that the police had warned the women that the minor’s situation could worsen if they continued to receive the pastor.

At the end of October, Blanco and Sierra traveled to a village near Jovellanos. On their way back, they took a detour and arrived at Macias’ house. They had not met each other before. They only knew about each other’s cases via Facebook.

Blanco posted a photo in which he, Sierra, another pastor and Macias smile, standing in front of a cellphone camera. “There are times when we don’t go out in search of friends,” he wrote, “but God in his mercy grants them to us.”

Macias recognized that with those men he shared “a deep desire to defend Justice, Truth, Liberty, and Life” — with capital letters and consequences.

They spoke about Lorenzo Fajardo, the Santiago pastor who was imprisoned at the time. Neither of them knew him personally, but they felt a sense of brotherhood as soon as they heard about his calvary.

On Oct. 22, Sierra received a phone call while he was at home with friends. The person behind the unknown number summoned him and Blanco to “the police station on the beach.”

Sierra said no and hung up. Minutes later, an officer showed up at the house and reiterated that they should go to the authorities the next morning, but the herders demanded a legal document. The officer ordered them to go with him immediately. At the station, they were threatened not to leave on Nov. 15, the day on which thousands of Cubans were called to march for change, as had happened on July 11.

On Sept. 1, they were summoned again to sign for an administrative fine. That was the closure of the charges pending from 11J. They paid in disagreement to avoid taking the case to court.

For Sierra and Blanco, even after paying the fine, the harassment did not end. “The next day, a police officer surprised us in the middle of the day by summoning us for two o’clock in the afternoon,” he said. Once at the station, he informed them that they would be “monitored for a period of at least six months.”

“We are still under surveillance,” Sierra complained, “under harassment, under surveillance because, according to them, we are persons of interest to the police.”

Yoe Suárez is journalist in Cuba.

This article was first published by Diario de Cuba and Cubanet and translanted into English by Evangelical Focus.