October 28th is the official feast day of one of Catholicism’s most revered saints, Jude Thaddeus, believed to have been a first cousin or even brother of Jesus Christ. Perhaps because Cubans have suffered great traumas in the last five hundred years, especially from the Nineteenth Century to the present, devotion to him is intense. Another reason is that virtually everyone who prays to St. Jude for something nearly impossible to achieve receives what s/he asks for, despite the fact that the vast majority of Cubans have never been to Church. In Cuba, recipients of St. Jude’s advocacy before God are always quick to convey their miraculous accounts, such as a cure from childhood cancer in the worst possible moments of the Special Period or the securing of multiple refugee visas to escape Cuba as a family at a time when the receiving country was handing out only one visa at a time. As a child, I grew up surrounded by images of Saint Jude but in all of them he was white. I never saw him as “one of us” until I went to Cuba. There images like this one abound: St. Jude’s dark skin speaks not only to a mixed racial heritage but to the relentless pursuit of social unity that has long defined Cuba. It is a place where the impossible becomes possible through steadfast, unwavering, pure belief. Havana, November 2011.
