(Read Part 1)

Jorge “Mayim” Travieso has not lost his smile, despite his arrests and witnessing the regime use heavy machinery in 2016 to destroy his small “Viento Recio” (Strong Wind) Ministry temple in the city of Victoria de Las Tunas. This ministry — part of the growing Cuban Apostolic Movement — is one of the groups that the Ministry of Justice (MINJUS) refuses to register in the Registry of Associations. Its leaders are avowed anti-communists who want no pacts or deals with Havana.

A source from the Alliance of Unregistered Cuban Churches (AICnoR) stated for this report that the refusal to legalize fraternal organizations results in a total lack of legal protection, leaving them more vulnerable to administrative decisions and increasing their exposure to repression — including summons, harassment, and police detentions. It also creates major obstacles to their social outreach efforts.

In June 2026, Viento Recio began providing free breakfasts to 15 pregnant women staying at a maternity home in the provincial capital of Las Tunas, with the food prepared and funded by the congregation itself.

Low birth rates — amid a lack of freedoms and the promotion of a “culture of death” under socialism — spell disaster for the nation’s future.

The Government Commission for Addressing Demographic Dynamics places the national average of pregnant women with nutritional deficiencies at 22.5% — meaning nearly one-quarter. Many end up in one of the 158 maternity homes that care for high-risk pregnancies.

Yet, the regime blocks civil society from supporting the Right to Life. Days after the breakfast initiative began, officials informed Mayim that it could not continue without provincial authorization. As with the Puerto Padre health outreach event, Viento Recio would have to wait for permission from the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC).

The pastor’s spirit of service did not waver; instead, he found another way to help.

In August, he launched a food program for elderly people who relied on the state’s struggling nursing home system. In February 2026, Cuba’s Official Gazette reported that the 12,697 beds in these centers were underutilized due to the poor structural condition of many facilities and a lack of supplies.

Once again, relying on their own resources and volunteer labor, members of Viento Recio prepared and distributed food at a nursing home located just a few blocks from the church.

Mayim recounted that the State offered them only a little anise tea — with very little sugar — and six small rolls for the 40 elderly residents of the institution. Viento Recio, for its part, brought bread with ground meat and cheese, chocolate milk, a flour-based pastry, and coffee.

But the authorities intervened and ordered the initiative halted.

“Given the existing hunger and need, it is inexplicable that aid to such extremely vulnerable people is stopped due to absurd, bureaucratic decisions made by callous officials,” the religious leader criticized.

He lamented that while the Catholic Church, through Caritas, distributes donations from the U.S. government, “the Cuban Apostolic Church in the Buena Vista neighborhood of Las Tunas cannot.” He emphasized that their motivation — “as Christians, as Cubans, as human beings” — was to help a neighbor who could no longer cope... who was in a stage of extreme survival.

The Escape

Outrage was felt in the exile community as well. In a Facebook comment, Cuban-American writer Sergio Andricain described the Castro regime this way: “They are like the dog in the manger: they neither eat nor let others eat.”

However, the elderly residents did not remain idle. They found out where the church was located — the small temple under a tent that had been demolished 10 years earlier (perhaps with the indifference of many of them) and was now saving them from starvation.

Mayim posted photos of dozens of elderly people — “blind, in wheelchairs, using canes,” some over 90 years old — who had made their way to Viento Recio to receive a cheeseburger, cornstarch milk, coffee, and a pastry.

“I don’t know if they asked for permission or snuck out, but there they were — happy and grateful to our God, who commanded in the Bible that we feed the poor, help widows and orphans, and not forget prisoners,” he said. On the first day after the ban was imposed on the nursing home, 16 people arrived, then 27, and the number has kept growing. Word reached Mayim that there are now fewer than 40 residents left in the home; many have asked to leave due to the precarious conditions there.

Speaking for this report, Mayim recalled that the motivation to rise up whenever an obstacle arises is rooted in Christian ethics: Jesus “left the care of the poor to the church. He knew that no government would care for them with the same love and tenderness as His people. Who cares about prisoners? Only God remembers them. It is the same with widows, orphans, and the destitute.”

“We are ministering to the poor of all kinds — church members, the ungodly, friends, and enemies alike,” he reflected. “Communists only help communists. Only God’s children have the mandate to show mercy.”

The Castro regime, accustomed to monopolies — from state telecommunications to media control — jealously guards the monopoly on solidarity. They want the State to be the only possible response to every hardship, refusing to acknowledge that the State itself has been the primary cause of these problems in Cuba. They want citizens to look to the State as the sole provider of aid; they fear civil society organizing and proposing solutions, because that undermines the concept of the all-powerful, benevolent “Father State” that lies at the heart of socialist ideology.

The nursing home near Viento Recio remained closed for nearly half the week following the church’s expulsion. They had nothing to offer the elderly residents. It is unknown whether it will reopen.