Winants Auditorium
John Suarez, Miguel Abrahantes and Amaurys Rodriguez-Matos

On Monday, April 16, 2018 the Saint Benedict Institute will co-host The Christian Resistance to Communism in Cuba with Hope College student group, Markets and Morality. The event will be held at 7:00PM in Winants Auditorium at Hope College.

The evening will include a talk by John Suarez with personal testimonies from Miguel Abrahantes and Amaurys Rodriguez-Matos.

John Suarez is a human rights activist and is currently the International Secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate. Over the past fifteen years, John has worked at the Center for a Free Cuba as a program officer in Washington D.C. and at the Cuban Democratic Directorate in Miami, Florida as a strategic planner, program assistant, and International Secretary.

He 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.

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.