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The Cuban priest Lester Rafael Zayas Díaz published a text on Monday titled "We Have No Bed," in which he denounces the extent of the moral and material collapse facing Cuba. This follows a recent incident in which Miguel Díaz-Canel coldly responded to a victim from El Cobre in Santiago de Cuba who lamented the loss of her bed after Hurricane Melissa.
In this context, Father Lester Zayas, pastor of the Sacred Heart Church in Havana, wrote a profound reflection on Facebook that turned the elderly woman's plea into a symbol of collective suffering.
"We don’t have a bed!" It’s the terrible cry that brings you back to reality and pushes aside future possibilities. The 'we don’t have a bed' is the desperate shout of the moment," the text begins.
The priest stated that this phrase encapsulates "the highest national deterioration" and that no promise of the future can be justified in the face of the despair of the present.
"How can we promise a future to those whom Hurricane Melissa—the latest one—and the hurricane of imposed ideology, blind and violently enforced for a long time, have stolen tomorrow from?" he questioned.
"Without a bed, there are no dreams, no future," wrote Zayas, who believes that this fundamental lack reflects the loss of home, faith, and dignity.
"Not having a bed means having nothing: no dreams, no hope, no confidence in the present of Cuba," he emphasized.
The parish priest also sent a direct message to those in power: “When someone asks you for a bed, provide a bed, not speeches. Offer your own if necessary; order that beds be brought in that moment. Step down if you cannot quell that terrible cry that rises from the depths of this people.”
In his text, the priest criticized the regime's triumphalist narrative, stating that "one cannot ask for resistance without beds to offer, without beds where one can dream."
And it concluded with a wish that reflects the social exhaustion of the country: “To dream that one day in our land a bed is not a luxury. To dream that no one has to ask any authority for beds.”
The publication by the Havana priest is a moral response to the presidential cynicism and the symbolic repression that followed Francisca's outcry.
The events that led to the priest's response occurred during a visit to the affected area where Díaz-Canel tried to reassure the residents by saying that "groups will be coming to evaluate" the damage, but upon hearing a woman shout, "we don't have a bed," he reacted in an irritated tone: "And I don't have one to give you right now either".
The phrase, recorded by those present and shared on social media, sparked a wave of outrage both inside and outside the country.
A few days later, the woman —identified as Francisca— reappeared forcibly in a video released by the first secretary of the Communist Party in Granma, Yudelkis Ortiz Barceló, expressing gratitude to the regime and Fidel Castro.
The images displayed what many described as a forced retraction, an example of the political manipulation and ideological control exerted over the most vulnerable.
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