The Cuban priest Alberto Reyes Pías published the 178th installment of his weekly column "I've Been Thinking" this Friday, with a message that draws a clear line between surviving and living with dignity, concluding with an explicit call to civic action in response to the crisis affecting Cuba.
Under the central idea "We were not born to survive," the parish priest of Esmeralda, Camagüey, describes Cuban daily life as an existence limited to securing food, medicine, and just a few hours of electricity, while uncertainty gnaws at the soul with a question that no one can answer: "Until when?".
"Surviving is getting up every morning thinking about how to get what you need to make it to the next day. It’s spending the day in one line after another, from 'solution' to 'solution', it’s the eternal burden of medicine that doesn’t arrive, food prices that soar, lost fuel, and power outages that offer no respite," wrote the priest.
For Reyes, the greatest danger is not the scarcity itself, but the resignation it brings: getting used to that agonizing life until considering it normal, celebrating as an achievement what should be a guaranteed right, and settling for crumbs "because we have forgotten our worth, our dignity."
The priest warns that when survival becomes the only goal, something within the soul begins to die: "The desire to build dies, the ability to dream dies, hope dies, your soul dries up, and resignation sets in."
In response to that diagnosis, Reyes makes a statement that goes beyond critiquing the political system. "Cuba does not only need a change of system; Cuba needs children who deeply believe that this island is not doomed to always be what it is today."
The text concludes with a clear call to every citizen: "We cannot wait for things to change on their own. That’s why we must start with what we can do now: not to lie, not to applaud what chains us, not to abandon those who raise their voices, not to forsake those who suffer alongside us."
The 178th column arrives after an intense week of publications from the priest. On October 1, he declared that the hope for change in Cuba “has greatly diminished” as the expectations generated at the beginning of the year were not met. The following day, he published the 177th installment, "The Blessing of Persecution," in which he analyzed the conviction of Anna Bensi and her mother — two years of restricted freedom for recording a MININT agent — and argued that the repression had the opposite effect: more interfaith unity, public solidarity, and a loss of fear.
Verbal activism from Reyes has led to increasing pressure from the regime. In January, State Security summoned him along with priest Castor José Álvarez Devesa and issued a "warning letter" for their public criticisms, an episode he labeled as intimidation. In the following months, he reported being monitored and receiving veiled threats, and in July, the authorities prevented him from traveling to Miami. In August, he delivered a direct message to the military and agents of the regime: "a people cannot be chained forever".
Despite everything, the priest maintains and intensifies his activity. Issue 178 concludes with the phrase that summarizes his thoughts on possible change: "A people begins to reclaim its freedom when it understands that no ideology, government, or power is above its rights, and stops being afraid to speak aloud what everyone whispers in silence."
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