After more than half a century under the dictatorial heel of Cuba’s totalitarian regime, there are few plot twists that have not played out in the Cuban polemic. On the heels of the recent flotilla demonstration and the announcement of another papal visit, it seems that Cuba’s conundrum is caught in a political zero-sum game where strategies are repetitive and the results predictably and woefully remain the same.

This week Pope Benedict XVI confirmed that he plans to visit Cuba and Mexico before Easter next year. The papal trip to Cuba comes 14 years after Pope John Paul II kissed Cuban soil and commenced the Catholic Church’s new role as interlocutor between the government and the opposition. While many residents on the communist-ruled island, and a significant majority of international observers, hailed Pope John Paul’s visit to Cuba as a success, the evidence reflects that outside of self-serving gains for the church’s evangelical mission, the late pope’s tour of Cuba did not produce any significant apertures in the Castro brothers’ tyrannical stronghold.

In the last two years, as Cubans prepare for the 400th anniversary of the appearance of La Virgen de la Caridad (Our Lady of Charity — the island’s patroness) there have been signs that Raúl Castro, whether by conviction or, more likely, by necessity, has leaned on the Catholic Church to serve as a mediator to the outside world. The Cuban dictator has made some concessions to the clerics but let’s not mistake that for true reform. There is no sign Raúl and his brother Fidel (educated by Jesuits at Belen) will yield the power they have illegitimately held for almost 53 years.

Last year, the church opened a new seminary 30 miles outside of Havana (the first of its kind under the Castros’ reign). The church in Cuba now offers leadership classes in subjects such as bookkeeping and marketing previously considered taboo under communist rule, and there have been talks to begin offering microloans to Cubans in order to stimulate entrepreneurship among the citizenry.

While these are small, positive steps, providing Cubans on the island an alternative to their hopeless situation, I can’t help but wonder if when acknowledging these measures one is not ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room — the fact that the dictatorship remains firmly entrenched.

Another major undertaking this year was the church’s role, under the leadership of Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, in brokering the release of the political prisoners. Among them were the 75 detained during the Black Spring of 2003, when Fidel Castro wielded his ominous hammer, jailing opposition leaders and independent journalists who were challenging his rule. Cardinal Ortega and the Spanish government negotiated a conditioned release for the dissidents and jailed opposition. The stipulation the Cuban government conveniently demanded was that they leave the island. Many of the released opposition leaders have told me that Cardinal Ortega was forceful in cajoling many of them to leave.

Across the Florida Straits, in a demonstration of solidarity with the struggling pro-democracy activists on the island, exile leader Ramon Saúl Sanchez, spearheaded a flotilla last weekend, which anchored 12 1/2 miles outside Havana’s famed sea wall, el Malecon, to set off fireworks (visible in the dark, rainy Havana night). While the intent of the flotilla was noble, limited resources and stringent restrictions by the U.S. government yielded modest results in terms of awareness on the island.

While the exile flotilla was preparing to set sail last weekend, Granma, the Cuban regime’s official newspaper, reported that five persons drowned off the coast of Havana as they attempted to escape the island.

So while the church tepidly requests more space in Cuba and the opposition on the island is frequently and violently suppressed by government-sponsored goons as exiles are reduced to symbolic protests, the Cuban people remain in the throes of despair — still living and dying under totalitarianism.