Maria Cueto Comes Home
Episcopal News Service. June 5, 1986 [86125]
Ruth Nicastro, Diocese of Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES (DPS, June 5) -- Epiphany Parish in East Los Angeles gave a homecoming party on May 18. The occasion was the return to their midst from federal prison of Maria Cueto.
Most attending the festive Eucharist and homecoming were from the parish, but others came from as far away as Texas and Pennsylvania, friends who had shared her struggle and now came to celebrate with her. Letters were read from Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning and diocesan Bishop Robert Rusack.
Cueto's crime was refusing to testify before a federal grand jury with regard to FBI inquiries about members of the Episcopal Church's former Hispanic Commission of which she had been staff director. Her work involved the Church's ministry with various Hispanic groups, including one whose members were advocates for Puerto Rican independence.
In January 1977, Cueto and her secretary Raisa Nemikin were subpoenaed before the grand jury. They allegedly were asked questions about material in the commission files relating to the Puerto Rican independence movement and in particular the group known as FALN. The FBI had been granted access to the files by senior Church Center staff.
Cueto and Nemikin refused to testify and were imprisoned for ten months. Their release came when a federal judge reviewed the case and found no reason to hold them nor to connect them with any criminal acts, such as terrorist activities attributed to FALN.
After that release, Cueto became active in the movement for Puerto Rican independence, and the FBI continued to seek information from her both through harassment and through arrests and incarcerations. Their interest in the case centered around one former member of the Hispanic Commission, Carlos Alberto Torres, who had disappeared and was later caught and convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with FALN activities.
Cueto and four others, including another Hispanic church leader, Stephen Guerra, were arrested again in September 1982. The charge was the same -- refusal to testify -- but the FBI said at the time they "represented the remaining leadership of the FALN."
In the trial which ensued, none of the five was ever accused of membership in the FALN nor of any criminal act other than refusal to testify; yet the government sought 15-year sentences for them. Despite the testimony in court of four Episcopal bishops, they were sentenced to three years in federal prison. Cueto served 25 months before her release with time off for good behavior.
Cueto's refusal was based upon her conviction that to testify would violate the relationship of confidentiality and trust necessary to the religious ministry carried on through the Commission. That claim was always rejected by the federal court because she was not ordained.
Cueto's story has brought forth a wave of support throughout the Episcopal Church, culminating in a resolution passed in at last September's General Convention. It affirmed the Church's solidarity with Cueto's and the four arrested with her in their struggle for justice and its respect for their right of conscience.
The case of Maria Cueto is not finished yet, notes the Rev. Richard Gillett, her friend and pastor during imprisonment, "for it has raised questions which have still be answered.
Among such questions he lists: What are the rights of privacy for the Church's increasing numbers of lay ministers, many of whom deal with sensitive pastoral matters? What is the Church Executive Council's responsibility to one of its employees arrested in what that person sees as devotion to duty and conscience? When does a person have the right to remain silent?
What about abuses of the grand jury system itself, now under review by a congressional sub-committee? How many times can you be charged for the same offense? ("Theoretically," he noted, "Maria could be charged again by a new grand jury for the same refusal.")
The list culminates: What are the rights of a group which dissents from the government's position, such as those who seek independence for Puerto Rico? Or those involved in the Sanctuary movement? "Maria's case has focused the Church's attention on these questions," says Gillett, "and the Church must seek the answers."