Lester Domínguez, the young man from Holguín who was left in a wheelchair after being attacked with a machete in March 2023, broke his silence in a video published on Facebook by content creator Noly Blak, where he described in raw detail how his health is deteriorating without any solutions being offered by the Cuban healthcare system.
In the recording, Lester is seen sitting in his wheelchair—broken and with a flat tire, the only one he has had since the attack—at his aunt's house in Holguín, where he is staying because there is no electricity in his hometown of San Germán.
"I need to have surgery because my spinal cord is compressed and my cervical spine is inverted, and that is gradually compressing the spinal cord more and killing me," says the young man, who will turn 20 on July 1.
At this moment, he urgently needs a powered electric wheelchair, as his spinal cord is being compressed and he can no longer open his hands or operate his chair independently, leaving him completely dependent for his daily activities.
Noly Blak urgently requested that someone abroad could donate or help with sending, and leaves Lester's personal phone number for those who want to contact him directly: 54-19-99-63.
However, what worries the young man the most is the surgery that doesn't happen.
Doctors confirmed in August 2025 that he was in condition to undergo surgery. Then came the search for a missing orthopedic minerva, followed by Hurricane Melissa, which damaged hundreds of health facilities in eastern Cuba, and in 2026 the collapse of the healthcare system - with a surgical waitlist of up to 96,000 people, including 11,000 children - has made intervention impossible.
«I even went so far as to get all the tests done, and they said they would call me but no one has done so. I managed to obtain everything little by little, with my own resources. I just need them to prepare the operating room and call me,» says Lester.
Recalling the attack, he describes how it all happened before he could react: "Straight from behind, I didn't even realize. They got me in a corner when I was heading directly home. I was just about to turn the corner. I was walking with my phone in hand and I barely felt the blow."
The assault was intended to take a phone, a Huawei that was in poor condition with a broken screen. The machete strike to the neck caused an incomplete C5 spinal cord injury, leaving him paralyzed.
Two assailants were involved in the assault: one of them, identified when Lester's phone was found buried in his yard, is serving a sentence following a trial in which the prosecution requested 20 years in prison for the attack plus an additional four years for stealing phones from other victims; the other took his own life.
The father of the young boy, Dennis Domínguez, published a complaint on June 21, in which he accused the Cuban government of total abandonment: "The child has been without any kind of government assistance for more than a year, and they claim to support vulnerable cases and those in greater need. They should stop deceiving the people."
He also recalled that his son "is alive by a miracle", having overcome mechanical ventilation, tracheostomy, bedsores, pneumonia, and other bacterial infections.
Noly Blak's video garnered over 109,000 views and more than 6,000 reactions, and it is the first time Lester speaks directly to the camera about the progression of his paralysis, three and a half years after an attack that took away his mobility due to a broken phone.
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