The First Church in Belmont, Unitarian Universalist, has raised $3,873 to send mosquito nets to Pepito Tey, a rural community in the Cienfuegos province of Cuba.
The donation is part of a larger effort by the Legacy of Slavery Project, a committee at the church, to confront the church’s ties to slavery on a Cuban sugar plantation in the 1800s.
According to committee co-chair Gina Carloni, the decision to distribute nets is directly related to a public health issue affecting the island.
“The situation with the mosquito-borne illnesses is real and it’s really horrible during the summer months down there,” said Carloni.
The breed of mosquitoes affecting the area is calledAedes aegypti. While this breed does not carry malaria, it carries other illnesses including dengue, chikungunya, and oropouche; all are viral illnesses that cannot be treated with antibiotics.
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Night is when the mosquitos are the worst, which is why the nets will be hung and draped over beds to protect people while they sleep.
Funds were raised by the congregation’s Share the Plate program, which donates half of the collection funds to a new cause each month. The funds were sent to Cambridge nonprofit Friends of Caritas Cubana, which purchased nets for every home in Pepito Tey.
When the nets arrive, local community members will distribute them to around 1,100 homes, as well as the convalescent home for the elderly.
According to Carloni, Belmont’s connection to Pepito Tey–and why the church would choose to send such a specific item to a town over 1,400 miles away–is part of a history of slavery, the sugar trade, and the Atkins family.
A Legacy Brought to Light
Just outside the sanctuary of The First Church is a sign with 177 names. Although these people never lived in Belmont, their labor is one of the reasons the church stands today, according to Carloni.
Those names belong to the enslaved and indentured individuals who worked at Soledad, a sugar plantation that is now known as Pepito Tey. The Legacy of Slavery Project worked with two Cuban historians who discovered the deed referencing the 177 names of the enslaved, which was located in the Cienfuegos Provincial Historical Archives.
According to Rebecca Scott in her academic article “A Cuban Connection: Edwin F. Atkins, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and the Former Slaves of Soledad Plantation,” the connections trace back to the Atkins family. Elisha Atkins had profited from slavery in Cuba by exporting sugar from Cienfuegos to Boston,
His son Edwin Atkins followed in his father’s footsteps, taking an interest in the sugar plantations. He eventually became a partner at Elisha’s company, E. Atkins & Co.In 1883, the Soledad plantation was acquired by E. Atkins & Co. After convincing his father, Edwin Atkins began managing the plantation, according to the Massachusetts Historical Society.
At the time of the Atkins’ ownership, there were at least 95 enslaved people still working on the plantation. Carloni said after slavery was abolished in Cuba in 1886, indentured laborers, including Chinese contract laborers, continued to work on plantations.
All the while, the Atkins family amassed wealth from this labor. Residents of Belmont, they purchased items for The First Church, tying the family’s name to the building’s history.
As previously reported in The Belmont Voice, the Atkins family donated $5,000 to fund the initial construction of the church. The Tiffany stained-glass window in the church sanctuary was commissioned by Edwin Atkins. His father’s name is inscribed below the glass figures depicting a shepherd and angel.
And finally, the music that reverberates through the sanctuary streams from the organ that was a gift to the church from Edwin’s wife Katharine, according to Carloni.
Reparative Justice
The Legacy of Slavery Project formed in 2023 as members of the church researched its links to slavery in the 19th century and how the church benefited from contributions from the Atkins family.
The initial work of the organization was to learn about the enslaved and indentured laborers of Soledad. Going forward, members hope to connect and work with the people of Pepito Tey, including the descendants of the formerly enslaved who still live there.
Listing the names of the enslaved in the sanctuary was an important step in working toward “reparative justice,” said co-chairs Carloni’s co-chair, Kathryn Bonfiglio.
Carloni, Bonfiglio, and the Legacy of Slavery Project are working to define what reparation means to their organization and to build a relationship with a place the church is intertwined with.
“Justice is in the Unitarian Universal values and principles and reparative justice is really what we’re trying to do,” Bonfiglio said, adding that people often misinterpret what reparations are.
“I think [with] reparations, people jump immediately to money,” she said. “When you talk about reparative justice, the way it’s truly reparative is you ask the people who were harmed, ‘What would make you whole?’. . .I think [this work] will also make us whole. I can’t look at that stained-glass window and not think that somebody was enslaved to pay for that.”
And that’s how the project in Pepito Tey came to be. A contact in Pepito Tey said mosquito nets would be a good match for their community, which is at risk of mosquito-borne illnesses, according to Carloni.
“If things were better, we would be taking members of our church to Pepito Tey to make that connection with people,” said Bonfiglio, in reference to the tensions between Cuba and the United States.
Instead, the committee continues to build a relationship from afar. As they look to the future, Bonfiglio said an immediate goal is to create a covenant or commitment within the church community that will further the conversation about The First Church’s connection to slavery.
“We want to have a commitment forever with these folks, to sort of say, this is our kind of justice, we are committed to you,” Bonfiglio said.
Carloni agreed, adding this work will take time.
“Repair is something that happens across time and with relationship building, and so a big part of that is recognizing the human connection” between Pepito Tey and Belmont, she said.
“We can now begin to convert something that was really complicated and difficult into something that is human and beautiful, and begin to also help repair those harms that get passed down from generation to generation,” Carloni said.
