Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is serving his sentence, but the regime keeps him in an undisclosed location

This Thursday marks the official expiration of the five-year sentence imposed on artist and political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, but the founder of the San Isidro Movement remains missing since July 7, when State Security agents removed him from the maximum-security prison in Guanajay, Artemisa, without informing his family of his whereabouts.

The only confirmation of the transfer came through other inmates of the prison, not from the authorities. Since then, no one in his circle has been able to see him or speak to him: he is not at his home in Cerro, nor in San Isidro, nor at the home of any close person.

On Wednesday, State Security agents promised the family that they would take him home to Cerro so they could see him. That never happened.

The activist Anamely Ramos was emphatic on Wednesday: "Right now, Luis Manuel is missing. He is not free. He is not released. He is in the hands of State Security somewhere in Havana."

Yanelys Núñez, in charge of the artist's work, concurred: "Until we have first-hand news, we consider him missing"; and warned: "It cannot be normalized for the regime to take a person out of political prison and make them disappear."

Núñez did not rule out the possibility that the regime might try to send him directly into forced exile, a practice already used against other opponents. "It's a possibility because they don't want Luis on the streets, especially in a Havana that is completely mobilized by its citizens," he stated.

The artist's environment has been managing a parole process for the United States for weeks, acknowledging that "there is no other possibility for Luis Manuel within Cuba."

Otero Alcántara was arrested on July 11, 2021, while attempting to join the protests of July 11, and was sentenced in June 2022 to five years in prison for "insulting the symbols of the homeland," "disobedience," and "public disorder." The regime did not grant him any reductions for good behavior nor included him in the presidential pardons of January 2025 and April 2026.

This Thursday, the poster "Luisma Día 0," a redesign of an original by Alfredo Rostgaard from 1972 created by Lilliam Dooley, is circulating on social media as a symbol of the situation: a figure with broken chains above and intact chains below. The question that summarizes everything still lacks an official answer: where is Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara?