The Cuban priest Alberto Reyes Pías published the 172nd installment of his weekly column "I've been thinking" this Friday on Facebook, where he draws on the thoughts of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer to explain how the regime has managed to involve capable individuals in repression without them questioning whether their actions are right or wrong.
Reyes, a parish priest in Esmeralda, Camagüey, draws from a distinction that Bonhoeffer made while in prison during World War II: the difference between evil and what the theologian referred to as "stupidity." This is not a matter of a lack of intelligence, but rather a moral renunciation of one's own thought.
“The stupid person is not someone who lacks intelligence, but rather someone who has stopped thinking for themselves, who uncritically adopts the ideas of a reference group, repeats the slogans of that group, and allows an authority to think for them,” writes Reyes, citing Bonhoeffer.
The priest applies this diagnosis directly to Cuba. The slogans that thousands of Cubans have chanted for decades—“Homeland or death,” “Socialism or death,” “Pin, pon, out, down with the worm,” “Anyone who doesn’t jump is a Yankee”—are expressions of that blind obedience induced by power.
"That’s why we have spent years shouting those slogans, because that cry gave us the identity of a powerful group," the priest points out, also mentioning the acts of repudiation and the aggressions by the Rapid Response Brigades as manifestations of that logic: "'Someone' said that anyone who thought differently was an enemy."
For those in power, who today suppress, harass, interrogate, threaten, and inform on others, do not necessarily act out of malice, but because they have surrendered their conscience to an authority. "They are incapable of thinking for themselves, and they are terrified of changing their minds or saying something that their group will not applaud," he writes.
According to the parish priest, that is also the reason why it is not enough to provide more information to those who have stopped thinking: "Evil can be fought, denounced, and exposed, but you cannot convince the fool with facts, nor can you appeal to their reason, because they no longer have their own reason."
Reyes concludes his reflection with a call for individual courage, echoing Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis in 1945 at the age of 39: "True resistance to stupidity begins by reclaiming the ability to think and to say 'no' when our conscience tells us that something is unjust." He adds his own conclusion: "Stupidity is not cured by information; it is cured by courage."
This reflection is part of a series of pieces from August in which Reyes has intensified the tone of his criticisms. In his previous reflection, he urged the people to resist through free expression and everyday dissent.
A week earlier, his column was directly aimed at military, police, and State Security agents, whom he warned that “a people cannot be chained forever”.
In previous months, the parish priest identified fear as the true support of the regime and argued that the Cuban crisis is not just economic but fundamentally political.
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