The Christian Resistance to Communism in Cuba
Monday, April 16, 2018
7:00PM - 8:30PM
Winants Auditorium
On Monday, April 16, 2018 the Saint Benedict Institute co-hosted The Christian Resistance to Communism in Cuba with Hope College student group, Markets and Morality. The event was held at 7:00PM in Winants Auditorium at Hope College.
The evening included personal testimonies from Miguel Abrahantes and Amaurys Rodriguez-Matos. The testimonies were followed by a lecture from John Suarez.
John Suarez is a human rights activist and a program officer of the Washington D.C. based Center for a Free Cuba. He holds degrees from Florida International University and Spain’s Universidad Francisco de Vitoria. He has hosted the radio program Valores Humanos (Human Values) for the Cuban Democratic Directorate's radio station, Radio Republica.
Suarez has spoken on various occasions before the United Nations Human Rights Commission, before the current UN Human Rights Council, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to denounce human rights abuses. He is the author of monographs published by the Center of Studies for a National Option and reproduced in both El Nuevo Herald and in The Miami Herald. Additionally, he has had opinion pieces published in Florida Today, Fox News Latino, Panampost, The Daily Signal, Dissident and Newsweek.
Cuban-native Miguel Abrahantes is an Associate Professor of Engineering at Hope College. He received his engineering doctorate in control systems from the Universidad Nacional del Sur in Argentina in 2000 and has been a teaching at Hope since 2003.
Amaurys Rodriguez-Matos, a university professor from Cuba, arrived in the USA a little over 1 year ago with his wife and four children. The Rodriguez-Matos family came into the U.S. just in time to qualify under the Cuban Haitian Entry Program for refugees from these countries. The family is being sponsored by St. Francis de Sales Church in Holland while Grace Episcopal Church is providing them with a home.
Markets and Morality is an intellectually curious and close-knit community of students at Hope College that engages in deep and continuing discussion of serious issues and works to open that conversation to the larger campus community. The group aims to support students as they examine the interplay of market forces through the lens of moral thought, including the precepts of the historic Christian faith, and facilitate a rigorous conversation about whether markets can contribute to human flourishing.