Cuba Must Rebuild From the Ground Up, Father Alberto Reyes Says

Cuba needs a new political system to emerge from decades of decline, Father Alberto Reyes Pías wrote Friday in a Facebook post, arguing that rebuilding the country will also require healing the divisions that have shaped life under Communist rule.

Reyes, the parish priest in Esmeralda, in the Archdiocese of Camagüey, described a nation whose damage extends far beyond crumbling buildings, roads and institutions. Surveillance, informing on neighbors, indoctrination and the persecution of dissent, he wrote, have left wounds that political change alone cannot repair.

“Cuba is a country in ruins,” he wrote in the 180th installment of his Facebook series, “I Have Been Thinking…”

A call for political change

For Reyes, the scale of Cuba’s crisis after nearly seven decades of Communist rule makes physical repairs and administrative reforms insufficient.

“We are a country that must be rebuilt from the ground up, and an indispensable condition for that is a change in the political system, a change in the social structure,” he wrote.

His reflection linked that demand for structural change to a broader reckoning with the ways Cubans have treated one another since the system established in 1959 took hold.

Surveillance, indoctrination and persecution

Reyes recalled Cubans spying on and informing on one another. He also cited young people sent to “absurd wars,” where some died, and the abuse many suffered during compulsory military service, where others lost their lives.

“We have attacked one another, spied on one another, informed on one another,” he wrote.

He criticized the requirement that generations of students leave home for state boarding schools as a condition for attending university, separating them from their families at an early age. He also cited the indoctrination of children and the harassment of young people because of their faith.

Dissidents and government critics, he wrote, paid a price for expressing views that departed from those prescribed by the authorities.

“They have persecuted and imprisoned those who have raised a different voice,” he wrote.

Reyes has previously spoken about the Catholic Church’s position under Cuba’s political system (in Spanish).

Justice and forgiveness

Changing those structures is necessary but not enough, Reyes argued, because structural change does not erase wounds accumulated over decades. If those wounds are not healed, he warned, Cubans risk reproducing tomorrow what they reject today and confusing justice with revenge.

“A country can transform its laws, its institutions and its political system, but it will not achieve real change if it does not heal the hearts of its people,” he wrote.

He called for justice and forgiveness together, distinguishing reconciliation from impunity or a refusal to hold people accountable.

“Forgiving does not mean forgetting, or justifying the unjustifiable, or giving up on the justice that must be done,” he wrote.

Forgiveness, in his view, means refusing to let the harm received “poison our soul” and dictate how people relate to one another. A society that does not learn to forgive, he warned, can remain a prisoner of its wounds forever.

What the next generation should inherit

Reyes recalled a young man who once told him: “I have written down the first and last names of everyone who has to pay for what they did to me.”

The priest suggested that Cubans make their own lists of everyone who had hurt them or their loved ones and, “from the calm of the present,” begin forgiving them one by one, seeking help if the process proved too painful.

“Rebuilding our country is not only about putting up buildings, repairing roads or changing institutions, but about learning to see one another as brothers and sisters after so many years of division,” he wrote.

He closed by urging Cubans to consider what their children would inherit.

“Because the true rebuilding of a country that has been submerged in hatred and division begins when we stop focusing on pain and anger, and start asking ourselves what we can do to free our hearts from resentment so that our children never inherit our wounds,” he wrote.

His reflection presented two inseparable tasks: changing the political and social structures he holds responsible for Cuba’s decline, and addressing the human consequences of decades of confrontation.

Father Alberto Reyes, a critical voice within Cuba’s Catholic Church

Father Alberto Reyes has used his “I Have Been Thinking…” series for years to examine the country’s condition. In May 2024, he announced that he would ring his parish church bells on nights without electricity as a sign of mourning over the crisis. He stopped after two nights; Catholic News Agency reported, citing people close to the priest and Church sources, that Camagüey Archbishop Wilfredo Pino had asked him to end the initiative.

In September, he urged Cubans not to lose hope (in Spanish), telling them that “no evil is eternal.”

Read this article in Spanish.