The Cuban presenter Carlos Otero revealed to the YouTuber Darwin Santana on the channel "El Mundo de Darwin" the episode that convinced him to leave Cuba: a meeting in 2002 where Fidel Castro recounted, with unsettling detail, the execution of what he described as the first traitor to the Cuban revolution, which took place in the Sierra Maestra.
According to Otero, that night he was walking along the Malecón in Havana when a Cubanacán Mercedes Benz taxi stopped beside him, the window was rolled down, and an agent showed him the identification from State Security: it was a mandatory summons to a reception at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, on the occasion of a visit from a foreign president.
Along with four or five other personalities from Cuban television, Otero was taken to a protocol room where he found a table laden with delicacies that, in his own words, neither he nor the Cuban people had access to during the ongoing crisis.
It was there that Castro, without apparent reason, began to recount the story of a man who slept beside him in the Sierra Maestra and who attempted to assassinate him. The rebels discovered the betrayal just in time, emptied the bullet from the suspect's carbine, and when he tried to carry out the act, they captured and executed him.
What chilled Otero's blood was the way Castro described the moment of the shot.
“At the moment we took the shot, there was a flash that lit up the entire scene”, said the dictator, adding that he had always wanted to find a painter who could capture that moment in a painting.
“I was literally scared,” Otero recounted.
The presenter recounts that at around one or two in the morning he arrived home, hugged his son, and told his wife: “We are leaving.”
The presenter, who left Cuba on December 8, 2007 through Canada, described Castro's account as that of "a cruel madman" and "a sarcastic narcissist," and stated that at that moment he understood there was no possible way out within the system.
The episode was not the only indication of the surveillance that the regime exercised over him.
The State Security had previously intercepted him on the Malecón after they saw him greet the dissident poet Raúl Rivero in a restaurant.
On another occasion, agents forced him to sign a document committing to report any plans against Castro's life. Otero signed to be left alone, but he admits that he would have never betrayed anyone.
The cast of Sabadazo, the show that dominated Cuban prime time with an 82% audience share during the Special Period, was also called to perform for Raúl Castro at the San Antonio de los Baños airbase, without receiving a cent and without the option to refuse.
"It was a must. No, it wasn't just a must; it was absolutely necessary. I'm informing you that you have to do this. They would make you disappear; you wouldn't appear on television anymore," Otero recalled.
The account by Castro regarding the "first traitor" historically refers to Eutimio Guerra, a peasant executed on February 17, 1957, for betraying rebel positions to Batista's army.
According to Che Guevara's diary, it was he who executed him, although Castro spoke in the first person plural in front of Otero, narratively appropriating the scene.
After 15 years at América TeVé hosting the show TN3 in Miami, Otero was fired in May 2022 and since then has been hosting "La Hora de Carlos," his own show on YouTube, on Mondays and Thursdays at 11 PM.
"We were deceived by Fidel Castro. I grew up believing in the Cuban revolution. I thought I was living in paradise," Otero confessed, whose father was a founder of INDER and who admits it took him years to understand the true nature of the regime that monitored, controlled, and used him at will.
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