Jesus Is Lord — Not The Communist Party
Inside Cuba, a generation of young Christian influencers is paying an extraordinary price for saying what they believe.
He films from a small room.
A chalkboard behind him.
An old Russian desk fan to his right—the kind that turns but doesn’t blow air, its blades holding a pair of sunglasses that go nowhere.
It’s not an accident.
That fan is Cuba. Motion without movement. The performance of function without any of the substance.
Ernesto Ricardo Medina—known online as el4tico, short for cuartico, “the little room”—started filming short videos with friends in early 2024 from that small space in Holguín, Cuba.
By 2026, he had become one of the most important Christian voices speaking against the Cuban government.
“Jesus is Lord,” he declared in a January video that would change his life, “not the Communist Party of Cuba.”
Seventy thousand people liked it.
Eleven days later, the authorities arrested him.
The Room Where Truth Is Dangerous
Cuba is a country where speaking against the government isn’t just unpopular—it’s illegal.
Churches are heavily regulated. Libraries and universities ban antisocialist content. Online dissenters face interrogation, surveillance, arrest, and prisons with well-documented human rights abuses.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel recently claimed—with a straight face—that no political prisoners exist on the island and that Cubans are free to protest.
Ernesto Medina is currently in custody.
He was charged with “propaganda against the constitutional order and incitement to commit crimes.”
What he actually did was stand in front of a chalkboard that read “Dios es el Señor”—God is the Lord—and tell the truth.
The Sleeping Giant Wakes Up
For generations, a quiet philosophy shaped the Cuban church:
“Los Cristianos no se meten en política.”
Christians don’t get involved in politics.
It sounds humble. It sounds wise. It sounds like the kind of thing a persecuted church learns to say in order to survive.
But Yoe Suárez—an exiled Cuban Christian journalist and analyst at the Family Research Council—calls it exactly what it is:
“A tool the regime uses to prevent the sleeping giant of the church from waking up.”
The giant is waking up.
And it’s doing it one Instagram reel, one YouTube short, one Facebook post at a time.
The Faces of Courage
Ivan Daniel Navarro is 22 years old.
He started his YouTube channel Voz de Verdad—Voice of Truth—in 2018 because he wanted to share the gospel with other young Cubans.
Politics wasn’t the plan.
“The injustices and the situation in Cuba,” he said, “compelled me to speak out.”
The police summoned him in 2023. Interrogated him. Threatened him with prison.
In late March of this year, Navarro and his wife left Cuba and took political refuge in Spain.
“Remaining silent and turning a blind eye to injustice,” he said before he left, “is the very opposite of the gospel.”
David Espinosa is 38.
He has three children. He wants to see them grow up.
He said that plainly—not as a reason to stop, but as the weight he carries every time he presses record.
An audiovisual producer at Havana’s Calvary Baptist Church, Espinosa has been summoned to the police station more times than he can count.
On April 13 of this year, they interrogated him for nearly two and a half hours.
They fined him 3,000 Cuban pesos. They threatened his children’s safety. They told him his filming equipment would be confiscated.
He is still filming.
“God has given us the responsibility to speak the truth and share his Word,” Espinosa said. “It’s been hard and it’s dangerous, but we know that God is with us. And that’s why we’re doing it.”
Anna Sofía Benítez Silvente is 20 years old.
She goes by Anna Bensi online.
She became an overnight sensation in October 2025 when she posted a video citing the Cuban constitution and pointing out the basic rights her fellow Cubans are denied.
Her platform shifted—from humorous sketches to direct calls for the dismantling of the dictatorship.
In March, police summoned her mother to the station without explanation.
Her mother filmed it. Anna posted it.
The next day, Espinosa, Navarro, and others drove across Havana to the police station and waited outside in prayer while her mother was interrogated inside.
Two weeks later, Anna herself was called in. Charged. Placed under house arrest.
She is still uploading content from her home.
Her most recent post before this article was written was a music video—a melancholy Latin folk ballad called “Mi Tierra”—My Land—pleading for the healing of her homeland.
From A Prison Cell, Written On Toilet Paper
In early April, Ernesto Medina—still in custody, still waiting—managed to smuggle a message out to his fellow Cuban Christians.
He wrote it on sheets of toilet paper.
“I deeply long for my freedom, but I know that this is an opportunity the Father has given me so that he may be glorified in me. He is the God of all comfort, and although the pain has been greater than I ever imagined, his presence has been even greater.”
What This Means For The Rest Of Us
We read this from places where faith costs us very little.
A mildly awkward conversation.
A social media post that might get some pushback.
The quiet discomfort of saying what we believe in a room that disagrees.
And sometimes even that feels like too much.
Medina filmed from a small room with a broken fan and a chalkboard.
He said “Jesus is Lord” in a country where saying it could cost him everything.
It did.
And from a prison cell, writing on toilet paper, his first instinct wasn’t bitterness.
It was worship.
David Espinosa said it best in the last line of a post written after his phone service had been deliberately cut to stop his voice from reaching further:
“I know even more surely that the truth doesn’t need mobile data to make its way. And when a child of God is blocked, the Lord himself often opens up paths in ways that no one can even begin to understand. I won’t stop speaking out about what I’ve seen and heard. My loyalty is to the Lord, not to men.”
Pray for Ernesto Medina.
Pray for David Espinosa.
Pray for Anna Bensi.
Pray for Ivan Navarro.
Pray for the church in Cuba—the sleeping giant that is choosing, at extraordinary cost, to wake up.
#freeel4tico