Father Alberto Reyes Pías, parish priest of Esmeralda, Camagüey, stated in an interview with Tania Costa for CiberCuba that the crisis currently facing the Island is “infinitely more difficult than the Special Period” of the 1990s, and that the fundamental difference between the two eras is the complete absence of hope.
"In the Special Period, there was a sense that this is a crisis, but it will get better. Now it's different. Now we don't think it will improve. We don't see any improvement on the horizon," declared the priest, one of the most active critical voices of the Cuban Catholic Church.
To illustrate the seriousness of the moment, Father Reyes Pías resorted to a powerful image that he repeated twice: "The ship is sinking."
The priest emphasized that the current collapse is not only economic, but structural. "The crisis is systemic. Beyond the lack of food, the absence of medicines, the blackouts, the educational system has fallen apart, the healthcare system, the hospitals—everything has crumbled," he listed.
He added a phenomenon to that list that, he said, would have been unthinkable in Cuba just a few years ago: the alarming increase in crime. "Violence has risen to alarming levels, to levels that for many years we only saw in movies," he stated.
To illustrate this, he recounted the case of a young man from his hometown, Florida, in Camagüey. "He made a living giving rides, renting out a motorcycle. He was taken down a country road and was killed. They slit his throat to steal the motorcycle. And he died. That was unthinkable in Cuba a few years ago."
Beyond the material deterioration, Reyes Pías pointed to a deep moral fracture within Cuban society. Unlike the Special Period, when a segment still genuinely believed in the revolution, today that conviction has vanished. "I believe that now there are many people who pretend to believe in the revolution," he stated.
The priest described a contradiction that often repeats itself. "Today you see a person at a government pro demonstration, at a public event, on May Day, losing their voice from shouting in favor of the revolution, and two days later you find out that person has left the country."
Far from ignoring this phenomenon, the regime is well aware of it, Reyes Pías warned. "The government knows. That's why it's so vigilant and why the repression is so well-oiled."
The interview took place one day after Donald Trump's speech before the UN General Assembly, where the American president stated that "freedom will come to Cuba" and described the Havana regime as an "utterly failed state," while the Cuban delegation walked out of the room in protest.
The economic context supports the priest's diagnosis. The CEPAL projects a contraction of the Cuban GDP between -6.5% and -10.3% for 2026, the worst in Latin America, and an independent study estimates that 6.45 million Cubans —66% of the population— do not have sufficient income to cover a basic basket.
Reyes Pías, who in January of this year was summoned by State Security under the threat of prosecution for allegedly being a "promoter of hate," concluded his assessment with a phrase that encapsulates the prevailing mood: "Now there is no hope, and the situation is becoming increasingly overwhelming and desperate."
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