The Church in Cuba Defending Human Rights

Here is an interesting article about the role of the Catholic Church in Cuba, specifically, the way it serves as the principal publishing house for articles that would not pass muster with the party censors.
The press, like unions, like the Church, is one of the principal instruments of civil society capable of expressing popular will in the face of government oppression. And, to be clear, in Cuba the government is still oppressive and Americans who throw that adjective at our government demean the word. Conservatives, of course, tend to only like unions and the press when they are in communist countries, but they serve a similar function in our own society: They allow divergent voices to manifest themselves and without such divergence, democracy has no vibrancy and human rights are more easily threatened.