Although the leadership of the Revolution tried to give the insurrectionary triumph a certain religious and humanistic aspect, very soon the belief in another superior being became the most feared enemy of the triumphant insurrection, along with the proclaimed humanism as green as palms.
Fidel Castro attacked religions in Cuba with ferocity, just as he did against homosexuals. He anointed himself as the paradigm to follow, he could not allow another religion that was not embodied in his person because, after all, Castroism is a form of mystical fundamentalism.
Church attendance dropped dramatically as did membership in fraternal associations like Freemasonry. In Cuba a new religion was installed in which the God was Fidel Castro and Castrolicism, as Gerardo Fundora described it, revealed truth.
The regime imposed values and norms that were inspired by the thought of Fidel and Marxism, following the dogma that “Religion was the Opium of the Peoples”. The ethical foundations of society were thoroughly attacked, one of its most important objectives being religions in general, and the Catholic Church, a key target to destroy, in order to build the promised new order.
It was an indelible experience for believers who, in defense of their faith, were discriminated against, persecuted, humiliated, imprisoned and shot, as happened, among many others, with Alberto Tapia Ruano and Virgilio Campanería, who before they died, shouted Viva Cristo Rey.
Verbal attacks on religions were very severe, including confiscations of church-owned schools. Parishioners were systematically harassed with the result that those without deep faith buckled under pressure.
However, a significant number of believers, despite the fact that repression and discrimination were accentuated, maintained their religious commitment, as was the case of the young Arnaldo Socorro, a native of Unión de Reyes Matanzas, whose family moved during his adolescence to Havana.
Socorro had been awarded a scholarship to study at the Colegio de Belén, where he joined the Juventud Obrera Católica. On September 10, 1961, he attended a procession with the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Patron Saint of Cuba, lowered in the name of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre.
The procession would start from the church of La Caridad, under the guidance of the then Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Havana, Monsignor Eduardo Boza Masvidal, one of the most courageous censors of the Castro regime, who was expelled from Cuba a week later with another 130 priests, by order of the hater by trade.
Arnaldo decided to participate in the religious procession that was undoubtedly an expression of rejection of the regime. In the place he learned that the authorities had prohibited the Procession, however, like thousands of people, he remained in front of the Church to demand that his rights be respected.
Sheltered by an image of the Virgin, he marched at the head of hundreds of people who decided to follow him, cheering Christ the King, the Virgin and freedom, just as at that time many of the young people shot by the dictatorship shouted in front of the wall of firing squad
Socorro’s courage would not be respected by the regime and its assassins. A henchman, aware of his impunity, unloaded a machine gun against the young man who fell mortally wounded.
He was 17 years old when he was murdered, but the murder was joined, as the journalist Julio Estorino affirms, “crime and outrage”, by the regime proclaiming that the murdered young man was a revolutionary who had gone to the scene of the events to prevent an act of the henchmen in cassocks, as Castro identified Catholic priests.
The murder was blamed on the priest Agnelio Blanco, who at the time of the events was on the Isle of Pines, another cruel lie in the extensive defamation campaign of Castroism against its critics. The evil did not end there. State Security officers went to the house of Arnaldo Socorro, threatened the family and buried him as a combatant murdered by the counterrevolution. Without a doubt, the dictatorship invested another Cuban with his crime and forged another martyr for the Homeland.
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