For lack of a better name, reporters covering the pope’s visit to Cuba last week called the mysterious, loitering operatives of the Castro regime “handlers.”
Some of the handlers wore name tags that suggested they were there to help, like personal concierges. Others wore temporary badges identifying themselves as organizers or security officials.
But whether they were driving shuttle buses or acting as translators or offering directions, there was no doubt that these battalions of handlers were there to watch, and presumably to report on the reporters.
Some reporters had their own individual handlers, who would pop up in the hotel lobby, or on the telephone, throughout the trip.
The Cuban people did not get that kind of personal attention last week, but they, too, had their handlers. Young, middle-aged, old; men and women; they turned out in force at papal mass sites and along motorcade routes.
Somehow it would have been better if these government representatives had been wearing uniforms and toting guns. Instead they dressed like the crowd, in short-sleeved sport shirts and jeans. They distinguished themselves mostly by how they stood and by a touch of menace in their eyes.
And when reporters reached over the barricades to interview Cubans in the crowds, their brief conversations drew an instant crowd of handlers, who leaned in to catch every word. Whatever shortages Fidel Castro may face economically, he still has plenty of watchful eyes trained on his people.
Coming from the United States, a place where the biggest obstacle to attending church on Sunday morning is the pull of a warm bed, it suddenly became quite clear why Cuba has turned into a country of atheists.
What kind of force could an old man in white robes bring to bear against that cloud of intimidation?
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Or to put it in Josef Stalin’s words–which have now become one of the great laugh lines of the 20th Century, given the current pope’s contribution to the end of communism–how many divisions does the pope have?
The answer, during the first few days of the pope’s trip to Cuba, was not fully evident. The crowd in Santa Clara, an impoverished town in the center of the island, seemed confused, tentative. The crowd in Camaguey, farther east, seemed downright cowed.
In Santiago, far from Havana, known for its revolutionary impulses in Castro’s early days and before that against Spain, the pope touched on his most patriotic themes. He hailed military leaders who fought for Cuba and for God, whose soaring monuments towered over him. The crowd applauded politely.
Only in Havana, on the final day, did the pope seem to rouse something deeper in the crowd.
Some observers have since said that Sunday was the first day the pope was really “on,” at the top of his game.
But the truth is, the pope’s delivery, flattened as it was by his own age and infirmity and a foreign language, was no more stirring Sunday than it had been on the previous days.
The difference was in what he said–not the political bites that made next-day news, but the carefully constructed, faith-based summation of the themes he had been building throughout his visit.
Had John Paul II come to debate the merits of Castro’s compromised Marxism versus the outdated Helms-Burton economic embargo, he would just be another old man yelling slogans, in a country that already has one of those.
Instead, the pope told people that God has a plan for them, here on Earth and beyond. There are a lot of parts of that plan, according to the pope; only when he had outlined many other parts–love, family morality, culture, suffering, evangelism–did his talk of freedom begin to resonate in the crowd.
It was not just canny politics, but a central part of the message that this freedom did not ally itself with either of the old Cold War adversaries.
That allowed Cubans a measure of safety to cheer. It also gave them reason to hope they were not being handed yet another patronizing fiction.
What kind of power does some cheering at a mass ultimately give the pope? That’s not easy to calculate.
But it would not be an exaggeration to say that there is a new army of eyes and ears in Cuba, less obtrusive than the handlers, looking and listening for things that seemed impossible to them just a few months ago.