We Christians believe that God is everywhere. That includes places of fulfillment as well as those where we suffer. During his exile on the island of Patmos, John received the revelations of the Apocalypse; Paul witnessed violent miracles — such as earthquakes — and a conversion within the prison at Philippi.

This continues to happen in that circle of hell called Cuba — a pit that socialism dug in the Caribbean. For many who face repercussions for defending justice and truth in the face of totalitarianism, faith remains a pillar of strength. This holds true even through small, family-centered miracles.

In February 2026, Doris Santiesteban Batista watched as the National Revolutionary Police arrested her husband, Ernesto Medina Ricardo — one of the creators of El4tico, an anti-socialist video platform. It was the last time they would be under the same roof. Left alone and in charge of their three-year-old daughter, Emma, she appears to have strengthened her faith in the time since.

The family’s Christian connection dates back decades, to a time when Medina Ricardo would visit a small evangelical congregation alongside his grandmother. Although he was not actively attending a church at the time of his arrest, his faith was so deeply ingrained that it permeated his videos.

“Jesus is the center,” “Jesus is the light,” “Jesus is Lord — not the PCC (Communist Party of Cuba).” More than once, these phrases appeared in his videos addressing social, economic, and cultural issues within a Cuba stifled by totalitarianism.

Doris — navigating a crisis that surpasses even that of the 1990s — tells me that God grants her patience. “I leave everything in His hands.” She has been publishing appeals — via videos and social media posts — advocating for her husband’s freedom; in some instances, she utilizes El4tico’s signature background, much like someone picking up the blood-stained microphone of a fallen comrade.

“I have been praying — so very much,” she told me in April. “And I prayed to God to see Tico — even if only for five minutes — or at least to receive a phone call.” It had been weeks since she had heard his voice. She was enduring that tactic which doubly punishes both prisoners and their families: the tormenting uncertainty of not knowing what has become of their loved ones — or themselves.

But Doris’s prayer was answered. On the night of April 19, “my mother-in-law told me that we would be going to see him the very next day.” And so it came to pass; she had found her miracle — perhaps an insignificant one to others, but a miracle nonetheless.

“I immediately fell to my knees and gave infinite thanks to God for hearing me,” she told me. “It was a grueling weekend for both of us, but God granted us His grace — the grace of allowing us to see one another.”

In late May 2022 — following the stabbing attack a “revolutionary” had inflicted upon her husband for the sole crime of being the father of a dissident — Tayri Lorenzo was awaiting the appeal hearing for her son’s case: that of the political prisoner Andy García. She foresaw “a very tense trial” — much like the previous one — in which he had been sentenced to four years in prison for peacefully protesting on the streets of Santa Clara during the July 11 (11J) demonstrations.

She sensed that the prosecution and its witnesses would stop at nothing to uphold the sentences, relying on false testimony while completely disregarding the witnesses and video evidence presented by the defense. “They will try to portray the police as victims — and the public as ‘intimidated’ — rather than showing the reality: a people crying out for freedom, for better living conditions, for medicines, for food, and for their fundamental rights to be respected,” she told me for an article published in Diario de Cuba.

She found solace in the support of her neighbors, her fellow congregants from various denominations, and the pastor of the Baptist church where she served as treasurer. Yes, indeed. Yet, ultimately, her son’s freedom rested in the hands of God: “One part of me clings to hope; the other simply waits for a miracle.”

And then, it came. Three days later, Andy was granted a temporary release from prison. Family and friends gathered at his home to embrace him. Although he would still be required to serve out the remainder of his unjust sentence, he was to be transferred to an open-regime facility. The writer José Gabriel Barrenechea — also a political prisoner under the Castro regime — embarked on a journey of faith amidst a personal ordeal.

I crossed paths with him in digital spaces; he identified himself as an atheist, a lover of Western culture, and a formidable polemicist — wry, intelligent, impatient, honest, and quick to take offense at any hint of censorship. He was fearless in his opposition to totalitarian ideologies, ranging from socialism to gender ideology; regarding the Castro regime’s push for the latter, Atlántica published a politically incorrect essay of his in 2022 — a piece that several independent media outlets had previously rejected.

Barrenechea, who began his professional life as a physics teacher, transitioned into creative and non-fiction writing almost simultaneously. He co-edited the independent journals Cuadernos de Pensamiento Plural, Cuadernos para la Transición, and La Rosa Blanca.

On November 8, 2024, he was arrested after participating in a peaceful protest against power outages in Encrucijada, Villa Clara. His mother — an octogenarian — relied solely on him for her financial support and care. The regime forbade him from seeing her, even though she was gravely ill and in her final days.

Months later, upon learning of her death — in a letter dated May 2025 sent from La Pendiente Prison in Santa Clara — Barrenechea reflected on his mother’s unwavering determination to raise him as a man of integrity. He lamented that the Castro regime had prevented him from receiving her final blessing and forgiveness.

In that letter, he wrote with a distinct ethos. He attributed the source of his joy to a higher power: “God saw fit to grant me the privilege of a mother — one of whom it can truly be said that she was a mother par excellence. Whatever I am — that small measure of myself of which I can take pride — I owe to the home in which I was born and raised.”

Among the cherished memories of his childhood — playing at his father’s feet, with his brother just returned from his scholarship program, and his mother cooking beans on an ordinary afternoon — Barrenechea noted: “If I could choose a single moment in which to live out the Eternity that God grants us,” it would be that very one.

Writing with the candid audacity of one experiencing faith for the very first time, he asserted that for mothers like his own, “God need not grant access to glory as a reward, but rather as a duty — the only duty He has ever self-imposed upon His own omnipotence.” And, reflecting upon Divine Grace, he wrote that the elderly woman continued to watch over him “from that better place — a place I, too, strive to become worthy of reaching someday.”

Mario Félix Lleonart — an exiled pastor and friend of Barrenechea — confirms the spiritual journey glimpsed in the letter. “He has transitioned from what he used to call a ‘cultural Catholic’ to a more vibrant and existential experience of faith — one that has been tempered and strengthened within the confines of prison,” Lleonart observed.

In another letter addressed to Lleonart, Barrenechea went so far as to confide in him about a sort of vision involving a 19th-century priest and philosopher: “God has sent Father [Félix] Varela to me on several occasions to offer me support.”

In the days following the protests of July 11 and 12, 2021 (known as 11J) in Cuba, several Christian leaders were detained for their participation in the demonstrations.

Held incommunicado in a prison in Matanzas — and despite the physical suffering he might have endured — Pastor Yarian Sierra’s thoughts were fixed on the well-being of his wife and their seven-year-old son, who has special needs. Unbeknownst to him, both had been evicted, and the church’s meeting hall had become their only shelter.

Sierra confesses that he endured those days because, while his body remained imprisoned, his soul and mind — being free — constantly returned to a biblical passage or an old hymn.

“Every inch of those four walls reminded me of Christ; in every small detail, I found a parallel to the spiritual life,” he recounted. On each of the five bars of his cell door, he used to imagine — as if etched into the metal — the five pillars of the Protestant Reformation: Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone), Sola Fide (Faith Alone), Sola Gratia (Grace Alone), Solus Christus (Christ Alone), and Soli Deo Gloria (To God Alone Be the Glory). On his 14th day behind bars, just as night was falling, military officers informed him that he would await trial under house arrest.

Sierra relates that “almost every night, some curious topic from the Bible would arise that piqued someone’s interest, and that is where the debate would begin.” During his days of detention, he and the others were denied access to Bibles. Even so, verses came to his mind one after another — despite his self-professed poor memory — intermingled with the raw emotion of the July 11 protests. Preaching to others became the purpose he discovered there. And he has not been the only one.

In May 2025, the pastoral couple Luis Guillermo Borjas Navarro and Roxana Rojas were detained for several days following accusations of contempt and disobedience. Their offense? Arguing that their son was unfit to fulfill his military service, which has been mandatory in Cuba since the 1960s.

During their son’s trial, the couple presented medical reports to substantiate the 19-year-old’s psychological and personality disorders. Addressing the court, the pastors declared that “an injustice was being committed — both in the eyes of men and in the eyes of God.” Far from his Assemblies of God church in Mella Vaqueros, on the Isle of Youth, Borjas Navarro did not fail to seize the moment. In statements following his release, he recounted that during his detention, “God was glorified among the young men, and five souls were converted — to the Glory of God.”

In 2023, Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo, pastor of the Mount Zion Church, underwent a similar experience. Like Sierra, he had participated in the July 11 protests — though in the city of Palma Soriano. There, he was detained by the military and sentenced to several years in prison.

Yet prison bars proved no impediment to sharing the Good News. When we spoke briefly by phone in the summer of 2023, he told me — and a group of Cuban Christians in exile — how he was setting up a small inflatable pool at his home to baptize those who had offered the prayer of faith.

It was merely a furlough — a temporary release from prison — yet for him, it was just as important for those men to descend into the waters as it was to spend time with his family. For him — a prisoner — it was an act of sharing the ultimate freedom.