We met them through the campaign “Until love is Law”, which for about a year has been promoting the collaborative platform Voces Ecuménicas Cubanas and which, in the midst of popular debates on the Family Code Project, come ” like a glove”.
The objective has been to “always make visible the diversity of families in Cuban ecumenical life and the dignity of everything created in that great “tree of life” that we identify as our commitment to plurality,” as they explain on their page of the Facebook social network.
Everyone in these audiovisual capsules is a believer, but they do not necessarily share the same religious creed. There are single-parent, homoaffective, reassembled families… there are families of all colors, because “as long as there is a thread of love, there is a family”, as the psychologist Patricia Ares expresses in one of the videos…
“… the essence of the family is the love relationship”
We know Dr. Patricia from various spaces and media. She and her husband presented themselves as a reassembled family, each arriving with two children from their previous marriage.
“The important thing in a family is their relationships, their ties, how they are able to express solidarity, reciprocity, containment, protection, that is the true family and that is the one we are defending,” said Patricia.
Reinerio Arce pointed out that “there is a great diversity in the Bible of different families, there is no single family model for me, the essence of the family is the relationship of love.”
“We are a pack, no one can be left alone”
Maylé Vázquez Ávila belongs to the Church of Quaker friends. She confessed that from a very young age she was preparing for the family that she wanted to create and, although she has sometimes felt labeled for being divorced, she understood that her family project was not lost at all.
“One day I said to myself: well, the train continues, someone just got off the train car, but we continue…” affirms Maylé. She, her girl, and hers, her boy, are in that “we” and they gave her an immense lesson about family as little children: “We are a herd, no one can be left alone.”
Maylé wants a family that embraces, that dialogues… Motherhood has led her to a certainty: God has to be a mother.
“…many waters will not quench love”
And that of Adiel and Lázaro has had to swim against many currents, but it remains there, celebrating the happiness of living together. Adiel is a Baptist and Lachy is an Episcopalian, he goes to different churches, but take care of his two cats together (the other members of the family they formed).
“The biblical text that we believe is very useful for our lives is Song 8:7 when it says that many waters will not quench love. Whether it is the waters of misunderstanding and prejudice, many times these waters try to quench love. , in our history of life it has happened, those many waters have not been able to extinguish that love”, they sentence.
family and solidarity
Joel Suárez is the son of Reverend Raúl Suárez, a Baptist pastor and founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center. Together with his father, he tells us:
“We are a family that, due to our family biography, try to embody in our performances, therefore in the family environment what we want and preach for the world. All of this becomes a particular challenge given that there are no traditionally assigned roles in the family and then we all have to face, boys and girls included, these tasks that combine the reproduction of the daily life of the family with solidarity abroad”.
“The world we live in is diverse, it is to do it together…”
Jorge is a Muslim, he believes in Allah, the God of the Koran. Mayla is a Protestant Christian, her faith is in the God of the Bible. However, there is a belief in which they do agree: “The world we live in is diverse, it is to do it together…”
This is how Jorge expresses it and adds: “When we look at nature, flowers are infinite, so how is it possible that if God’s creation proposes so many different and diverse flowers, sometimes we pretend that we, as human beings, have to be encapsulated in a single vision, that makes no sense.”
Mayla confirms it from her own family experience: “we are so different, we have totally different ways, not only of being, of thinking, of believing, and what unites us is that, it is how my son looks at his sister and it is as if The world outside in that look, how my husband looks at me and all that is love…”
A family is a shelter
Idael Montero Pacheco came and left her entire blood family in Bayamo, Granma. He is now the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Marianao and has built a family here based on relationships of hospitality and solidarity:
“I think that the fundamental question is there, in that discovering that you have a support group, that you are not alone. Family is a refuge, family is also solidarity and when one feels that those needs are satisfied, well, he says, gosh, this It’s also my family…
“A family is a space for socialization, it is a space for love, family is a refuge, family is also solidarity and if in a space where we live it works or those values are made visible, then the family is present”.
