Myriam Márquez

They were little girls when the Cuban revolution swept their island -- kids with big dreams and a rock-hard faith in God.

Those were tough times for Rhode González Zorrilla, 52, and Dora Arce Valentín, 45. Tougher than for many other children in Cuba because their fathers were pastors. With a constitution that until a decade ago plainly stated Cuba was an atheist country, you had to be special indeed to speak up publicly and embrace God.

"The children of pastors suffered the most," González Zorrilla, a chemist and Pentecostal pastor who heads the Council of Churches of Cuba, which include Baptist, Evangelical, Methodist, Presbyterian and other Protestant denominations, told me. She and Arce Valentín, the group's vice president, were in Central Florida recently on their way to Chicago and New York to talk to U.S. Protestant ministers about ways their congregations can help Cuba's growing churches.

Arce Valentín, a Presbyterian minister, recalled how her teachers would ask students to raise their hands if they believed in God before railing about the faithful. "My father was a minister. Everybody in my neighborhood knew it. Of course, I raised my hand. It was an education designed to make you believe that God doesn't exist."

"There was social pressure," González Zorrilla explained.

"Discrimination," Arce Valentín pressed, "but not persecution."

A matter of semantics, perhaps. Certainly, children caught between two opposing beliefs had to navigate carefully. Today, these women still do.

They are caught in the swirling contradictions that surround Cuba's U.S.-dollar-dependent communist government that quashes Cubans' attempts at free enterprise and a failed U.S. policy that seeks to appease a hard-line segment of the Cuban exile community in which the notion of "dialogue" remains a four-letter word. Those exiles view the Council of Churches with suspicion; apologists for Fidel Castro's failed regime.

It's easy to criticize from the outside. But what of those who stayed and toughed it out? What of those who follow Christ's call to turn the other cheek?

As an Afro-Cuban whose father traveled to the United States before the revolution to build bridges with Pentecostal churches here, González Zorrilla views exchanges between the two countries as crucial; so does Arce Valentín. They also believe dialogue between the churches and the Cuban government is important, recognizing that revolutionary goals, such as health care and education for all, are worthy, but are fall short, and that churches can play an important role.

Cuban pastors and Catholic priests would like to see the island's churches take a more active role in social-service projects, from running homes for the aged or ill to opening schools. González Zorrilla summed it up in a way true Christians should understand: "We want the people to not be waiting to be handed things, but that they mobilize to do it themselves. We need resources."

Since the early 1990s, when the Cuban government stripped the atheist label from its constitution, Protestant congregations have grown exponentially. "We weren't prepared," Arce Valentín said. "Our churches need repair, and we need more churches."

While they work to build bridges between the two countries, the Bush administration goes on a fool's errand with new restrictive travel and cash-remittances rules designed to court Cuban exile votes. Instead, the new rules have caused Bush's support among Cuban-American voters to drop by 15 percentage points.

González Zorrilla and Arce Valentín shake their heads at the notion that a self-professed Christian would come up with such a hurtful policy.

Myriam Marquez can be reached at mmarquez @orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5399.