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The Sociopolitical Influence of the Roman Catholic Church on Abortion Policy in the Dominican Republic and Cuba Presented to The Faculty of the Departments of Classics, History, and Political Science The Colorado College In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Arts By Charlotte H. Kaye The Colorado College May 2013 Chapter I: Introduction to the Sociopolitical Influence of the Roman Catholic Church Kaye Dominican Republic and Cuba 2 Introduction Latin American history does not begin in 1492. Historically and historiographically, however, Columbus’ landing reshaped the entire region. Cuba and the Dominican Republic experienced comparable Spanish conquest, lore similar to many of the former European colonies in Africa and Latin America. Christopher Columbus discovered both islands on his first expedition to the New World. Hispaniola and Cuba were extremely profitable to the Spanish; the conquistadores heavily exploited the resources on each island.1 The Roman Catholic Church arrived with the Spanish, and had an even longer and potentially more formative stay in these two countries. The Church lost no time in implanting itself into the land, and Christianity spread rapidly across the region. Soon, the clergy’s reach extended into Caribbean life from the remotest areas of the islands to the big cities. Thus, much of colonial development integrated Roman Catholicism into the culture and tradition. As the Church grew and retained its power into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it became the agency for social well-being of the Cuban and Dominican peoples - “the voice of the voiceless.”2 Cuba and the Dominican Republic both came under the rule of dictators during the twentieth century. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina governed the Dominican Republic for thirty years beginning in 1930. Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was dictator of Cuba for over fifty years starting in 1959, but had made appearances as a vocal leftist dissident in the prior decade. The 1 Alan Taylor and Eric Foner, American Colonies, (New York: Viking, 2001), 33.The Dominican Republic and Cuba are the largest nations in the Caribbean. The Dominican Republic is located on the island of Hispaniola or as the Spanish sometimes called it Española or Santo Domingo. The island is split with Haiti on the western side and the Dominican Republic on the eastern side. 2 Emelio Betances, The Catholic Church and Power Politics in Latin America : the Dominican Case in Comparative Perspective, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 1-2. Kaye Dominican Republic and Cuba 3 two dictators, despite the fact that their rules literally overlapped only a few years, were active as well as at their peak of power during the mid-twentieth century. During these decades of dictatorship, Trujillo chose to embrace Roman Catholicism and incorporate it into his governmental policies. Cuba, on the other hand, went in the opposite direction. Castro sought to almost rid the island nation of Roman Catholicism both socially and politically. The case studies of these two nations provide a glimpse of extreme cases on the Latin American axis of Church-state relations. The pluralized relationship and history of the social and political influence of the Roman Catholic Church on Latin America and Caribbean nations is a complex topic; many different factors intertwined in the Church’s function given the institution’s extensive reach across the population. These issues include, but are not limited to, economic and class stratification, political strategy, gender relations, ethics, and human rights. The Roman Catholic Church is an institution just like any other that creates its own agenda. Because of this, it effects great change in these areas.3 Doctrine and Canon law can play into national legislation, contingent on the influence of the Church in state affairs.4 Many potential routes regarding a national social policy that may have been shaped by the Roman Catholic Church; I chose to focus on the topic of abortion laws and debate as the measure of sociopolitical influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba and the Dominican Republic’s governmental policies during periods of their histories. 3 The Church has been and continues to be vocal about its stance on human rights issues. 4Mala Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 210. Doctrinal laws cover social matters such as divorce, religious toleration, welfare, and so forth. Kaye Dominican Republic and Cuba 4 The topic of abortion, whether taboo or an accepted perspective, is multifaceted. In the first section, I will go further in depth on how the Church relates to abortion policy; and why this is a practical tool for measuring ecclesiastical influence. The second section will lend context to the role of the Catholic Church in Cuba in the Dominican Republic from colonization to dictatorship. Lastly, I will compare and contrast the role of the Roman Catholic Church under Trujillo and Castro as told through abortion policy. The theological and historical background of the Roman Catholic Church and abortion policy In order to better understand the weight of abortion as a tool for measuring the influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the state, I here present a partial background on how opposition to abortion evolved into a fundamental doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, and how it relates to Church-state sociopolitical relations. Legality of abortion has long been a topic of debate and conflict, but not necessarily a central topic until after the Roman Empire adopted early Christian edict as government policy. Prior to Christianity’s permeating the Empire, laws prohibiting abortion were rare to non- existent, philosophers and scholars wrote and debated on the moral question of abortion, but nothing was concluded. Until the patristic era, laws on abortion would be considered permissive by modern standards. The Roman politicians of the time were not particularly concerned with regulating morality and ethics through laws; the Empire functioned on the foundation of the family as the local government. The paterfamilias, head of the household, was the sovereign Kaye Dominican Republic and Cuba 5 leader of the house.5 Roman code, in fact, explicitly allowed patrefamilias to make the the decision whether to abort, expose, or kill an infant within the house until the post-Constantinian Empire.6 This was a long-standing tradition held over from the Roman Republic; according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian living in Rome under Augustus Caesar, “Romulus granted to the Roman father absolute power over his son, and his power was valid until the father’s death, whether he decided to imprison him, or whip him, to put him in chains and make him work on a farm, or even kill him. Romulus even allowed the Roman father to sell his son into slavery.”7 The paternal figure had autonomy regarding everything familial. This structure encouraged the father to scrutinize the virtues, morals, and ethics of his upstanding Roman family and substituted for government regulations regarding abortions, infanticide, and exposure.8 The head of the household’s judgment ultimately prevailed, the father had - vitae necisque potestas - the power of life and death. Not only were decisions about family planning decided within the family, but abortion, infanticide, and exposure were quite common occurrences in the Roman Empire. It was not seen as unethical to get rid of a child in order to protect the family or the state.9 Much of the myth surrounding Rome, in fact, tied heroism, fortune, and bravery to abandonment: Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, were abandoned as children, raised by wolves, and grew up to found 5 John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: the Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 58. 6 Michael J. Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church : Christian, Jewish & Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1982), 64. 7 Jo-Ann Shelton, As the Romans Did : a Sourcebook in Roman Social History, 2ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 17. 8 Boswell, 58. 9 Boswell, 58. Kaye Dominican Republic and Cuba 6 the great city. Giving up a child was not considered a shameful act.10 This was a practical matter for the group. Several respectable scenarios for terminating a pregnancy or abandoning a child existed in the Romans’ eyes. Abortion and infanticide were common, for example, when a child was conceived at an inopportune time. This could be related to age of the parents, a lack of resources to raise the child, or a pressing civic need.11 Ovid, a Roman poet, told the story of Ligdus in the Metamorphoses: Ligdus was a freeborn man, but from a lower-class family. He was a poor man, but moral and honorable. He told his pregnant wife, when she was approaching labor, ‘I pray for two things – that you may have an easy labor, and that you may bear a male child. For a daughter is too burdensome, and we do not have the money. I hate to say this, but if you should bear a girl – I say this with great reluctance, so please forgive me – if you should bear a girl, we’ll have to kill her.’ He spoke the words, and they both wept, he who had given the order and she who must carry it out.12 This story demonstrates the power of the male head of the family, as well as one of the thought processes behind infanticide. Although Ovid’s story is only a fable, the story exemplifies the cultural acceptance of abortion; the woman in the story is not shocked or appalled by her husband’s expectation that she will murder the child if it will be a burden on the already poor family.

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