The Cuban priest Alberto Reyes Pías published on Friday the 179th installment of his weekly column "I Have Been Thinking," featuring a reflection that strikes at the heart of the collective fear that the regime has cultivated for decades: the cost of speaking the truth compared to the even greater cost of remaining silent.
"To tell the truth has a price, but so does keeping quiet. The distinction lies in the fact that the price of truth can lead us toward a new future. The price of lies is to forfeit that future in exchange for a survival that remains miserable," wrote the parish priest of the church in Esmeralda, in the Diocese of Camagüey.
The text, published on his Facebook profile, accurately describes the control mechanism that the regime has refined over generations. "For decades, we have learned to measure our words, to silence what we think, to raise our hands in 'unanimity', and to reserve the truth for the intimacy of family and friends, while nothing around us changes for the better."
Reyes argues that no social reconstruction is possible without first acknowledging reality. "You cannot heal a wound that is denied; you cannot rebuild a house by saying it was never in ruins."
The priest also dismantles the argument that fear must disappear before the truth can be spoken. "We do not need to stop being afraid in order to start telling the truth; we only need to ensure that fear does not kidnap us, that fear does not decide for us, and that fear is not greater than our desire for freedom."
This delivery is the most recent in a sequence of reflections that the priest has intensified since August. On August 21, he described Cuba as a "stagnant" country and proposed a national dialogue towards a democratic transition. Shortly thereafter, on September 5, in a message dedicated to the Virgin of Charity of Copper, he urged to maintain "the courage to tell the truth" amidst repression. Also, on this October 1, he warned that the hope for change had significantly diminished because the expectations generated at the beginning of the year had not been met.
His complaints have not stopped. Last week, in the delivery 178, Father Alberto Reyes stated that the people are starting to regain their freedom when they lose the fear of publicly denouncing what many only whisper. Delivery 179 delves deeper into that same idea.
The verbal activism of the priest has not gone unnoticed by the regime. In January 2026, the State Security summoned and interrogated him along with priest Castor José Álvarez Devesa, issuing them a "warning notice" for their public criticisms. Father Alberto Reyes described the procedure as "intimidation and not a dialogue."
In May, he was summoned again under the threat of prosecution for alleged "promotion of hatred." In July, the authorities prevented him from traveling to Miami, and he described Cuba as a country in "permanent war" against its own people.
Despite these pressures, the priest—born in Camagüey in 1967—has not interrupted his column, which he has been posting on Facebook since 2020 and which has already accumulated 179 installments.
"Cuba not only needs to change certain structures. It needs to reclaim something deeper: the ability to look at its own reality without fear, to talk about it without disguises," he concludes in his latest text, ending with an image that encapsulates his entire line of thought: "In the heart of the Cuban, the longing for freedom resonates, and one of the first signs that a people begin to regain their freedom is that its men and women start calling things by their name."
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