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| Sisters at Spanish Center working with Cuban Refugees |
In 1952 President Fulgencio Batista, backed by the Cuban army, staged a
coup, outlawed the communist party and established a pseudo-democratic
dictatorship which lasted for seven years.
Batista was ousted by the revolutionary July 26th movement in
1959 and fled the country. The
communists took control of the army and the government by executing dissenters
numbering in the thousands. During these
years many refugees fled to the United States and relations between the two
countries became strained. In February of 1960 Fidel Castro, leader of the communist party, signed a
formal agreement with the Soviet Union.
Alarmed by this alliance, U.S. President Eisenhower gave approval for
the CIA to train and arm a group of Cuban refugees to overthrow the government
of Cuba. All three of the Sisters’ American
Dominican Academies flourished during this period. Their reputation for educational excellence
was excellent and enrollment was plentiful when the communist regime of Fidel
Castro forced their closure in 1961. Tensions
between the U.S. and Cuba mounted after the doomed Bay of Pigs Invasion, and the
Dominican Sisters returned to the United States just as the Cuban missile
crisis was beginning in 1962. Cuba was
suspended from the Organization of American States and economic sanctions were
imposed when Fidel Castro was elected president. With the support of the Soviet Union, Fidel
Castro set up a Marxist-Leninist single-party communist system of government and
the hope of a democratic nation was lost. In 1960 the diocese of Miami
established the Centro Hispano Catolico (Catholic Spanish Center) and Dominican Sisters were sent from the Motherhouse in
Pennsylvania to help refugees fleeing oppression in Cuba. The American Dominican Academies were closed by
Fidel Castro. The Dominican Sisters were
forced to leave and their property was confiscated the Cuban government. Dominican Sisters met the boats pouring into
Miami from Cuba, fed the hungry, found shelter for the homeless, nursed the
orphans, tended the sick and found jobs for those able to work. They built a nursery and a clinic and a retreat
house for women in a suburb of Miami and placed it under the protection of Our
Lady the Morning Star.
