The historian and activist Alina Bárbara López Hernández warned this Saturday that the Christian churches in Cuba have the potential to become a political force capable of challenging the regime if their millions of followers embrace as a mandate of faith the defense of the persecuted and the struggle against injustice.
In an analysis published on his Facebook profile, López wrote: "If the millions of faithful in Cuba begin to see the protection of the persecuted and the fight against injustice as a pleasant task for Christ, the Cuban state will acquire a powerful enemy."
The text begins with the events of Friday, October 2, when Ariel Limias Leyva walked through several streets of Centro Habana carrying an antigovernmental banner and managed to climb the steps of the Capitolio de La Habana—a historically guarded site—while law enforcement was scattered monitoring the trial of Ana Sofía Benítez Silvente (Anna Bensi) and her mother, as well as the homes of journalists and Christian pastors.
Limias Leyva was transferred to Villa Marista, the main detention and interrogation center for State Security in Havana, early on Saturday morning, as confirmed by his wife Yulia Morales. The woman also raised concerns about her husband's delicate health: "He had a heart attack just on January 18, and he is undergoing treatment for his heart."
López, who states that she does not practice any religion but analyzes the phenomenon from her background as a historian, points out that this episode reveals a structural gap in the regime: dissent is growing, in her words, "in geometric progression," while the forces of order are increasing "in arithmetic progression," and a collapsed economy further diminishes the state's capacity to sustain multiple fronts of repression simultaneously.
"Although it may seem so, having power is not the same as having control," wrote the activist.
The most significant factor is the collaboration of various historical denominations—Baptists, Pentecostals, and Methodists—in explicitly critical statements regarding the repression against their members. On September 30, the Methodist Church in Cuba, the Western Baptist Convention of Cuba, and the Pentecostal Evangelical Church of Cuba, Assemblies of God, issued statements in support of Anna Bensi and her mother, who were sentenced to two years of restriction of freedom for recording a MININT agent.
On the same day of the trial, an evangelical pastor was arrested who was trying to attend the hearing, and a Christian activist with the same intent was also detained.
López outlines a historical line to support his argument: primitive Christianity prevailed over the Roman Empire, and Protestant denominations arose specifically from the organized resistance of the faithful in the face of Martin Luther's prosecution. He also quotes Sun Tzu to describe the repressive strategy of the regime: "If you open several fronts of combat, your position will be weak and your enemy's position strong."
The analysis comes at a time of accumulated repression. The Cuban Observatory of Conflicts recorded 1,415 protests in July 2026, a historical record, and Cubalex counted nearly 2,000 repressive actions in the first half of the year. Journalist Henry Constantin has been in pretrial detention since mid-September, and prosecutors have announced requests for eight and ten years for the youth involved in the El 4tico project.
López herself, who has been under house arrest since June 2024 as a precautionary measure, has been detained at least five times in 2026 while attempting to carry out her monthly civic protest in Matanzas.
"They have just opened a powerful new front; it will be difficult to close it. It adds to older ones, as well as those that will come," he concluded. "No system of exclusion has been eternal."
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