The political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara stated that he is willing to continue his fight from exile.
“Ame and Maykel were kept aside to see what Trump would do, and I have always felt like some sort of bargaining chip, and with all that background, I decided to go into exile,” said Otero Alcántara in a phone call with Ernesto Fundora, director of a documentary about his work, according to the report from Telemundo.
"They want to take a little bit of me out, here, on the street, or wherever," the artist asserts, who believes that resistance to the Cuban regime should focus on a collective effort.
"We won't be able to do much more than what has been done at our level, as individuals," he declared.
Regarding the current situation of the island amid tensions with the Trump Administration, Otero says that "everyone lives in this strange fear that a bomb is going to drop next to you, but people say, 'I’d rather die and let my family have a plate of food tomorrow.'"
In early February, Otero Alcántara urged the authorities from prison to view the national reality through art and to acknowledge the precarious situation faced by the population. “I demand that the Cuban regime look through the painting 'Happy Peasants' and recognize the conditions of poverty in which our people live today. Art can also be a mirror,” he wrote.
The artist asserted that change should not come about due to external pressures, but rather as a response to the internal deterioration affecting Cuban society. "In the face of such material and spiritual poverty, it is necessary to yield and allow life to find its way. Do not do it because of external pressure; do it so that our people stop suffering," he added.
In the same message, he linked the continuity of political power with a scenario of social collapse: "Do it so that disaster and violence do not remain the faces of Cuba."
The documentary Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara: We Are Connected, directed by Cuban filmmaker Ernesto Fundora, reviews his artistic and civic journey, his role in the San Isidro Movement, and the impact of his actions on public debate both inside and outside the island.
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