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The father of Lester Domínguez Ortiz, the young man from Holguín who was left in a wheelchair after being attacked with machetes in 2023, denounced on Facebook the complete abandonment of the Cuban government towards his son and requested donations to buy an electric wheelchair before the boy's birthday on July 1.
Dennis Domínguez posted the message on Saturday, describing a bleak and inescapable situation: Lester continues with an inverted vertebra in his neck that has not been operable, forced to wear orthopedic braces, while the wheelchair he uses is so worn out that it broke, causing him injuries to his hand.
"The child is alive by a miracle," the father wrote, recalling that his son overcame mechanical ventilation, a tracheotomy, bedsores, pneumonia, and other bacterial infections following the attack.
The harshest accusation is aimed directly at the regime: "The child has been without any kind of government assistance for more than a year, and yet they claim to support vulnerable cases and those in need. Stop deceiving the people."
Dennis also ironically questioned the official narrative: "A medical powerhouse, where a child is in danger of losing their life due to that inverted vertebra that has not been able to be operated on."
Lester's surgery has been postponed multiple times.
In August 2025, the doctors confirmed that the young man was ready for surgery, but by October, the family was still searching for an essential orthopedic minerva for the procedure.
In November 2025, Hurricane Melissa —which impacted 461 healthcare facilities in eastern Cuba, including the province of Holguín— delayed the operation again.
These obstacles are now compounded by the general collapse of the Cuban healthcare system, which, in 2026, has accumulated a surgical waiting list of up to 96,000 people, including 11,000 children, according to data from the Ministry of Public Health itself, whose officials acknowledged that surgical activity had to be limited to emergencies due to a lack of electricity and resources.
Lester was 16 years old when Adrián Grass Bermúdez struck him in the neck with a machete to steal his cell phone in March 2023. The blow caused him an incomplete C5 spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed. The attacker was identified when Lester's phone was found buried in his yard.
The Prosecutor's Office requested 20 years in prison for the attack, plus an additional four years for the theft of phones from other victims; the trial was concluded for sentencing in May 2024.
Three years after the attack, Lester showed some improvement in the upper body but still could not walk, and the unoperated vertebra remains the main threat to his recovery, as it could lead to arthritis and hinder any progress in rehabilitation.
For those who wish to contribute, Dennis Domínguez provided the MLC card numbers (9235 0699 9486 9543) and CUP (9205 0699 9242 9778), as well as the phone number +53 50112552.
"I hope that God and the doctors continue to help restore the child's health," the father concluded in his post, in which he also indicated that he would keep updating on the progress of the donations.
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