Pastors Mario Jorge Travieso Medina and wife Velmis Adriana Mariño González just want to be allowed to visit their daughters in the United States. They long to attend an international conference for leaders affiliated with their religious network. They would very much like to be able to accept an offer, made by friends, to send them on a long overdue and well-deserved holiday. But they are unable to do any of these things, because since 2020, the Cuban government has prohibited them from leaving the island for ‘reasons of national security’.
It would be logical to assume that in order to be considered a threat to national security, the couple must be guilty of criminal activity. In the eyes of the Cuban government, this is so. Though they have never been charged or tried, Pastors Travieso Medina and Mariño González founded and have led an illegal association for over 20 years. Rather than an organised criminal organisation, however, their association is religious in nature, peaceful, and provides much needed humanitarian aid to those in the surrounding community. This is the kind of work that the Cuban government considers to be a threat to national security.
Pastor Travieso Medina graduated with a teaching degree in 1980, after completing his studies in physical education. Ten years later, he decided on a change of career, and took a full-time position as a pastor at a church associated with a legally recognised Protestant Christian denomination. In 1998, he completed post-graduate work via distance learning with a US-based seminary, earning a master’s degree and a doctorate in theology, neither of which was recognized by Cuban institutions.
He parted ways with the legally recognised denomination in 1999 after its leadership came under intense pressure from the government due to the pastor’s outspokenness. Two years later, he founded a new association, the Mighty Wind Ministry, linked to the Apostolic Movement – a network of independent churches across the island – in the city of Las Tunas.
In a catch-22 typical of the Cuban government’s approach to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), registration with the Ministry of Justice is required for all associations, including those of a religious nature, but the process is opaque and arbitrary, making legal registration almost impossible to obtain.
The Mighty Wind Ministry, like hundreds of other independent civil society organisations, including religious groups, was not permitted to register, and the government began an extended campaign of harassment across the pastoral couple, including the demolition of the church in April 2016, which continues today. In 2022, the Cuban government revamped its Criminal Code, increasing existing penalties, including fines and imprisonment, for leading both unregistered organisations and unauthorized meetings.
The current travel ban imposed on the couple is just the latest iteration of the government’s attempt to pressure them by restricting their freedom of movement. In early 2013, after the Cuban Communist Party eliminated longstanding requirements for an ‘exit permit’ and a letter of invitation in order to travel abroad, Pastor Travieso Medina applied for a passport. The response from the authorities was that the ‘computer had classified him as limited’ – with no other explanation.
Three years later, he was informed that he was permitted to travel. Again, no reason was provided for the change to his status, but he took the opportunity to travel to a religious conference in Argentina. As he was on his way to the gate after checking into his flight, he was intercepted by Cuban Department of Identification, Immigration and Foreigners (DIIE) officers who took him to a private room where they thoroughly searched his belongings and threatened to confiscate his mobile phone. They allowed him to travel in the end, but Department of State Security (DSE) agents took advantage of his absence to ransack his church, confiscating 20 benches, lamps, and trays and other items used for the provision of meals, all purchased legally, and to threaten the owner of the location where the church met with the confiscation of her property if she allowed the church to continue to hold religious activities on her land.
Only a few months after Pastor Travieso Medina’s return from Argentina, he received a summons from the government Department of Physical Planning. He complied with the summons, arriving promptly at 10am the following day, and was taken into a room where he was interrogated for two–and-a-half hours. At the end of the interrogation, he was informed that not only was he now prohibited from leaving Cuba, but his movement would also be restricted to within the city limits.
The restriction was lifted once more in 2019, and the pastor was able to travel, however, in March 2020, he went to the local DIIE office in Las Tunas in order to renew his passport. He was made to wait for four hours. Finally, a DIIE office informed him that his request to renew his passport could not be processed because he was still subject to a travel ban and was not permitted to leave the island ‘by air or by sea.’ The pastor again asked to know the legal justification for the travel ban; the DIIE officer, who refused to identify himself, replied that it was ‘for reasons of public interest’.
The use of restrictions on the freedom of movement on citizens has a long history in Cuba. As mentioned, up until 2013, all Cubans were required to obtain an exit permit from the government in order to travel abroad for any reason, which in turn, could not be obtained without a letter of invitation. This allowed the government to vet the travel plans of its citizens, to approve those of individuals and groups who would publicly voice support for the one-party state and its policies outside the country, and to veto the plans of those who would not.
When it came to religious leaders, this meant that leaders who were part of the government-supported Cuban Council of Churches (CCC), were permitted to travel relatively freely but were expected to deny reports of human rights violations in the country whenever the opportunity arose. An infamous example of this was the March 1988 declaration of Reverend Raúl Suárez, a former CCC president who travelled extensively around the world for decades before the requirement for an exit permit was lifted, at a press conference in Geneva, organised by the Cuban government delegation to the UN, of ‘absolute freedom’ of religion in Cuba.
Even after the travel laws were reformed and the requirement of an exit permit was eliminated, the Cuban government still found ways to selectively restrict the freedom of movement of its people. Over the past decades, CSW has documented scores of cases of religious leaders including Roman Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, Muslim imams, and Protestant leaders from both recognised and unrecognised denominations being arbitrarily prevented from leaving the island.
In many of these cases, the individuals were not informed that they were under a travel ban until they were at the airport and at the point of passing through Cuban passport controls on the way to board their flight. In every case, when they asked why they were not permitted to travel outside of Cuba, they were informed that it was for reasons of ‘national security.’ Not one person affected by these travel bans ever received an explanation of exactly what risk they posed to Cuba’s national security. Each one of them, however, had a documented history of experiencing FoRB violations and a reputation for speaking out about them.
Pastors Mario Jorge Travieso Medina and Velmis Adriana Mariño González fit this profile. They have reported 50 serious FoRB violations from 2000 to the present, including the already mentioned demolition of their church, arbitrary detention, repeated interrogations and fines, threats against members and leaders in their ministry, and the forced cancellation of religious events, to name just a few. They have refused to remain silent, not only about their own experiences, but also injustices experienced by others like wrongfully imprisoned Pastor Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo.
Nothing the Cuban government has done to them thus far has succeeded in neutralising the couple, and it seems as if the regime may be growing more and more desperate to be rid of them. In October 2023, the pair went to the provincial offices of the Ministry of the Interior and asked again that the travel ban be lifted. They were informed that their request would be considered, but only if they promise to leave Cuba and the lives and ministry they have built there and never come back. A few weeks later, they were informed that while Pastor Travieso Medina would be permitted to travel if he agreed to go into permanent exile, he would have to do so alone, as the travel ban on his wife was reinstated in retaliation for posts she made on social media. And so, they remain at home.
By CSW’s Head of Advocacy and Americas Team Leader Anna Lee Stangl
FoRB in Full 