The Cuban artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara expressed this Saturday the tragic dimension of his forced exit from Cuba, hours after stepping onto U.S. soil after five years of imprisonment.
"It is important to acknowledge the fact that I am expelled from Cuba and that this is not right. This is not right," stated the visual artist and co-founder of the Movimiento San Isidro in an interview with El Estornudo conducted at the Ermita de la Caridad del Cobre in Miami.
Otero Alcántara arrived in Miami this Saturday on American Airlines flight AA2706 from Havana, after the Cuban regime conditioned his release on his permanent and irrevocable exile from the island.
His arrival came after a week and a half of anxiety during which he remained missing, having been taken from prison by regime agents two days before completing his full sentence, a situation that Amnesty International described as enforced disappearance.
The artist acknowledged that the euphoria he feels right now is a fleeting emotion. The true weight of exile will settle in after spending some time in the United States.
"I also come to understand exile. We'll see tomorrow when all this settles down, when I start to breathe in air that is not from my home, when I can't see my son, when I can't return. Of course, I will feel hurt, so that is not good. But I will also work from that place," he stated.
Regarding his five years of imprisonment in the maximum-security prison of Guanajay, in Artemisa, Otero Alcántara described a profound personal transformation.
"First, I am more human. Prison is a place where you are able to look into the eyes of people who, even after committing the worst crimes, remain human beings. There, you do not let hatred turn your heart to stone, because that is the intention of power," he pointed out.
At the Ermita, he staged a performance in which he assembled the fragments of a broken virgin he brought from Cuba, symbolizing the fractured nation.
Upon arriving in Miami, he sent a direct message to the regime: “Just give in, because we are talking about situations that go beyond just a lack of food. We are talking about millions of people suffering, families separated, people who are here and cannot go there, whose mothers die, whose fathers die, and they cannot return to give them a final kiss.”
In January 2022, when the regime offered him exile as an alternative to imprisonment, Otero Alcántara rejected it with the phrase "I would rather die here." Four years later, his forced departure from the country occurred under conditions he himself qualifies as unacceptable.
The artist confirmed that his 16-year-old son remains in Cuba and that he decided not to bring him yet, to first understand the reality of exile before the young man makes his own decision.
"There are so many fractures between Cuba and those in exile, because one thinks that you left for the 'yuma' and that's it, but it's not like that. There is pain here too," he acknowledged.
His first words on American soil also included a call to action: “I come to work (...) Every minute I waste is another minute of dictatorship.”
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