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Dagoberto Valdés Hernández remembers that cold morning on January 25, 1998, as if it were yesterday. There he was, on an elevated stage in Havana next to Pope John Paul II, a stooped, elderly man who was perhaps the most important religious figure of the era.
Below them both sat Fidel Castro, one of the most polarizing figures in Cuban history. He had severely restricted the church since the 1960’s and declared Cuba an officially atheist state. He’d also confiscated church property and banned many religious public celebrations.
The pope handed Valdés a Bible, and the then 45-year-old sensed a historical turning point for Cuba.
“At Mass led by the Pope, he was up on the high altar, and Fidel Castro was down below for the first time,” said Valdés. “The Pope spoke, and Fidel remained silent. It was like a triumph of faith over the communist regime.”
Now, as the communist government of Cuba seems to be on the brink of collapse, Valdés is again in the spotlight of a historical moment. Shuttling between the U.S. and Pinar del Rio for years and facing interrogation on every return, he’s been a voice for freedom of expression and religion on the island. His life story may tell more about the country’s future than it does about the past.
Born in Cuba’s Pinar del Río, Dagoberto Valdés Hernández was raised in a dual-faith household: Methodist-Anglican on his mother’s side and Catholic on his father’s.
As he walked home from a Christmas play rehearsal one night, his father and mother waited for him in the living room. Valdés’s Catholic grandmother wanted him to do his first communion, a practice exclusive to Catholics.
“So tonight, you are going to decide what you want to do with your life,” said his father.
He chose Catholicism.
“Don’t ask me why,” said Valdés. “Maybe one day—when I meet God—He will tell me.”
After high school, he applied to study sociology at the University of Havana. Before the year started, he got a call telling him that because of his faith, he was forbidden to enter the humanities.
In 1961, the regime shut down all Catholic institutions. An atheist curriculum was then introduced in schools. Teaching materials were revised to reflect socialist values, and history was restructured to amplify the revolution’s ideas.
“In a totalitarian society, everything is controlled by the state,” said Sebastián Arcos, interim director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. “The state will know if you go to church…even if you don’t.”
Valdés decided to study in his hometown at the University of Pinar del Río, but it offered only two majors: economics and agriculture. He settled for agriculture, having always loved botany.
By 13, he was teaching Catechism, a class for Catholic basics, to younger kids, and by 20, he was offered a position as leader of The Young Catholics.
“There was no religious background,” said Aldo Leon, a Cuban native who attended Valdés’s classes when he was 10 years old in Cuba and became an altar boy. “It was not very well tolerated. He taught me about our religion in a time when that was nowhere to be found.”
Because it was the most practiced religion in Cuba, the Roman Catholic Church became the regime’s primary target.
“You do see a lot more [Cuban priests] being activist, more vocal, and in some cases, more confrontational to the regime,” said Dr. Daniel Pedreira, assistant teaching professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at FIU. “They’ve suffered for it in different ways, sometimes violently in protest.”
Although not a priest, Valdés has also faced punishment.
At age 39, Valdés launched Vitral, a sociocultural magazine focused on the Church’s social teachings.
“It reached a circulation of 12,000 copies, each 60 pages long, which were distributed throughout Cuba via the church’s network,” said Valdés. “Of course, the regime didn’t like it.”
In April 1996, he was given an ultimatum: Vitral or his job.
He chose his faith.
“I founded that magazine, it’s my way of dedicating myself to Christ and Cuba,” said Valdés. “I cannot deny my Christian identity just for a job.”
He was fired and given work picking up dead palm leaves on a farm for the next decade, but this did not slow him down.
While working 10-hour days, he continued writing for Vitral and was part of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba in 1998.
He was one of 20 laypeople chosen from all over Cuba to participate in the ceremony at Revolution Square. During the Mass, the laypeople were called up to be gifted a Bible directly from Pope John Paul II. It’s a gift Valdés holds dear today.
“It was like a triumph of faith over the communist regime,” said Valdés. “I had suffered so much for the church, and now, the head of the global church was giving me a Bible right in front of Fidel Castro. It felt like a confirmation of my faith and a commitment to keep moving forward.”
Most experts agree that the changed approach to the church by the island’s leadership was the result of the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s most important patron. Cuba needed to engage with the Western world to survive. This allowed Valdés some room to act upon his beliefs.
Nevertheless, in 2007, the government dismissed him from the palm tree farm after Vitral’s organization was dissolved. He took the opportunity to work for the church full-time.
By February 2008, Valdés and other writers founded their own magazine, aligned with their previous content. It was called “Convivencia.”
“We used to meet in people’s homes, not in churches, but we began to study the transitions from communist countries to democracy,” said Valdés.
Taking lessons from the histories of countries like Czechoslovakia, Spain, and Poland, they began building an underground democratic civic class.
“Some people came up to me and said, ‘You’re not going to make it past the first issue of the magazine,’” said Valdés. “We’re now on the 109th issue.”
Twenty-two years later, “Convivencia” has transformed into the first independent democratic think-tank inside Cuba, Valdes says. It hosts yearly meetings to discuss how to democratically develop specific sectors, like education and agriculture.
These meetings provide a framework for the country’s transition to democracy, which seems increasingly inevitable.
“There’s a sense of excitement among Cubans because we haven’t had a moment like this since 1991,” said Arcos. “Now we’re at the end of a very long cycle. The regime is under much more pressure, both economic and political.”
President Donald Trump has been putting pressure on the regime by enforcing an oil embargo since January and mentioning ideas of further interference, sometimes citing Venezuela, where the U.S swooped in and captured President Nicolás Maduro. But experts are skeptical that a similar mission for Cuban leader, Miguel Diaz-Canel, will have the same effect.
“Diaz-Canel is really just a puppet figure,” said FIU’s Pedreira. “He’s really not someone that if you take them out, the regime will collapse.”
But the Cuban regime’s oppressive tactics won’t just melt away. This past April 8, Valdés was detained after speaking with two members of a small environmental group, Naturpaz, who had visited his home. A veiled threat mentioned that he could be considered an “enemy of the state.”
“The… objective was to warn us that we are in the midst of circumstances where the United States is threatening Cuba, and that any alliance or activity we undertake with others could be considered an alliance with the enemy,” states the Center for Coexistence’s press release on the incident. “And he added, speaking very seriously, that before the first missile is launched from the United States toward Cuba, state security would have to act against the counterrevolutionaries.”
Despite the harassment, can Valdés and the church lead the Cuban people into an era of reconciliation? Might it play a crucial role in Cuba’s shift to democracy?
“The church will play a unifying and humanitarian role in this transition,” said Pedreira. “It will help in the distribution of aid coming from different groups, but also maybe help to distribute that aid on the ground.”
Valdés says the church provides space for community and rebuilding trust. He adds that it could influence the education system to create a better balance between science and humanities.
“I dream of a democratic and free Cuba that will give me a small role at any level, so I can continue doing exactly what I have done all my life: educate,” Valdés said in an interview with the University of Miami.
But FIU’S Pedreira believes it might not be so easy.
“At some point, there has to be complete collapse or some change,” said Pedreira.
The state of the island seems to be deteriorating by the minute. Nationwide blackouts and fuel shortages on the island have left Cuban residents and exiles with one question on their minds: What will happen next?
“I believe that faith is the reason why the Cuban people, who have been faithful to Christ, are a people who, very soon, will begin to rebuild what Communism prevented them from doing,” said Valdés.
