José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), starred in one of the most emotional moments of the Liberation Day Rally held in Miami to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the protests on July 11, 2021, with a message that combined denunciation, hope, and an urgent call for continuous action.
The event, organized by Cuban Freedom March under the direction of Alián Collazo, began with a march from La Casa del Preso on Calle Ocho in Little Havana and concluded with a main rally at Domino Park that lasted into the night.
From the stage, Ferrer recalled the historic significance of those days in 2021, when Cubans took to the streets in over forty cities, from San Antonio to the east of the country, and warned that repression has not eased: "It has been five years since those great and glorious protests. And hundreds of political prisoners survive amid violence, torture, extreme hunger, malnutrition, tuberculosis, scabies, and many other dangerous diseases."
The opposition figure emphasized that, despite 67 years of dictatorship, resistance within the island has not waned: "The people do not surrender. They continue banging their pots, closing the streets, building barricades, lighting bonfires at night, illuminating the nights of blackout, painting graffiti against tyranny."
Ferrer was emphatic in rejecting the idea that the struggle is limited to symbolic dates: “The struggle is not just about a July 11th, it’s not just about ten days a year, or even a hundred. The struggle is a matter of every day. It requires energy, strategy, sacrifice, intelligence, knowledge, discipline, and above all, a deep love for Cuba.”
The opposition leader, forcibly exiled from Cuba in October 2025 after more than four years of imprisonment in the Mar Verde prison in Santiago de Cuba, also highlighted the political support that the Cuban cause has in Washington: "Today, five years after July 11, we are undoubtedly stronger than ever and closer to freedom because we have friends in the United States. We have President Donald Trump, we have Marco Rubio, we have Cuban-American congress members, we have senators like Rick Scott and Ashley Moody."
The fifth anniversary of 11J arrives with figures that illustrate the scale of repression: in May 2026, 1,281 individuals were reported to be imprisoned for political reasons in Cuba, of which at least 338 were serving sentences directly related to the protests of 2021.
The regime released 2,010 prisoners on April 2, 2026, as a supposed humanitarian gesture, but explicitly excluded those convicted of crimes against authority, a category that includes most of the prisoners from the 11J protests. The sentence of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, leader of the San Isidro Movement, was set to expire on July 9 without the Supreme People's Court granting any reduction.
The event in Little Havana also included an art exhibition at the Tower Theater, featuring performances, poetry, and the screening of the documentary "Cuba y La Noche," as well as the participation of singer Aymée Nuviola.
Ferrer concluded his speech with a promise that encapsulated the spirit of the event: "Today we are closer to the moment when tyranny will fall and we will achieve a Free Cuba for all and for the good of all, as dreamed by Martí."
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