The year 1994 was a year of forced apertures in Havana.Philosophical tendencies such as Buddhism, diverse types of yoga and meditation entered upon the scene with the economic crisis permeating a dialectical materialist outlook that had been rocked by the debacle of the socialist camp and economic uncertainty.
Me, like most youth in that dark crisis of the “Special Period,” desperately sought ways to emigrate.
However, the trip that I began that same year didn’t (thank God) require the maze-like immigration bureaucracy.
One afternoon at the Radio Taino radio station, I ran into a Mexican friend who was promoting meditation.
The journalist who had arranged the interview warned, “You can’t say the word “soul” or “spirit” on the air, much less the word “God”! If you do…I’ll lose my job!”
My friend seemed confused and concerned. Once on the air, the word “benediction” almost slipped out, but he caught himself and said “benefits.”
The incident reminded me that once, when entering the church of the Loma del Angel in Old Havana, I discovered a Christ figure that impressed me greatly.
I tried to get my boyfriend at that time to go see it, but he was terrified of the fact that if he were seen entering a church, he would be expelled from the ranks of the Young Communist League.
I have always been rebellious, so in a panel discussion on the stage of the National Theater, as soon as I got the opportunity I let loose with “When God made man…” – pausing to gauge the effect. But the earth didn’t open up under me, the audience didn’t seem to notice the terrible crime and no one at the theater lost their job.
Impressive Changes
Three years later, sitting in front of the TV, I watched the mass conducted by Pope John Paul II broadcast live from our very own Revolution Square!
When the cameras panned the dense and enthusiastic crowd, I saw —unfurled and covering the front of a building— an enormous banner with Christ’s image.
This happened as abruptly as after the decriminalization of the dollar we could then enter “dollar stores” in which previously access had been allowed only to foreigners.
Also in ’94, we saw hundreds of rafts launched into the sea, in broad daylight.
Aboard some of these rafts were people who had already served prison sentences for the same act.
But the exorcism in the Square didn’t end up being completed.
When some friends and I attempted to legalize our meditation group, we discovered that the sole order that enjoys official status is Kriya Yoga, the school founded by Paramhansa Yogananda prior to 1959.
The rest of us are waiting for a Ley de Culto (freedom of worship law) that has yet to be approved.
Although Hatha Yoga is now used as therapy in rehabilitation centers and polyclinics —and its practitioners are not persecuted or harassed— still, tacitly, we the searchers of God are seen as strange or possibly hostile to the regime.
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