Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara touched free soil this Saturday upon landing at Miami International Airport, five years after being imprisoned by the Cuban regime following the protests of July 11. Dozens of friends, activists, and journalists awaited him in the terminal, where they sang the Cuban national anthem as he crossed through the arrival doors.
The activist Anamely Ramos, a member of the San Isidro Movement in exile, broadcast live the wait and arrival from the airport and revealed details of the irregular exit process from Cuba: "State security did not allow him to board the plane until the last minute. They didn't take him to the airport until the last minute; in fact, they took him directly from the place where they had him to the plane. He didn't even go through the normal immigration controls."
The flight AA2706 from American Airlines arriving from Havana was delayed by several hours. The release of Otero Alcántara was, in practice, a forced exile: the regime conditioned his departure on a permanent abandonment of the island.
His five-year sentence officially expired on July 9, 2026, but the regime did not release him on that date. On July 7, he had been transferred from the Guanajay prison by State Security to an unknown location, a situation that Amnesty International denounced as enforced disappearance. Only on July 17 did the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approve his humanitarian parole.
Ramos described the scene as a moment of immense emotional weight: "After five years locked away. It's a very emotional moment."
In his first words to the press, Otero Alcántara set the tone for his activism in exile: "My mission is for that country to be prosperous and to live for all of us." He also demanded freedom for the artist and political prisoner Michael Osorbo, who remains imprisoned in Cuba.
Cofounder of the Movimiento San Isidro, Otero Alcántara was arrested on July 11, 2021, and sentenced in June 2022, in a closed trial, to five years in prison for charges of "outrage against the symbols of the homeland," "disobedience," and "public disorder." Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience.
After leaving the airport, he called on his supporters to gather at the Ermita de la Caridad del Cobre in Miami, where he planned to carry out his first symbolic act on free soil: the performance "assembling the Broken Virgin." Ramos explained the meaning of the gesture: "Luis Manuel is calling for us to go to the hermitage, that we are going to assemble the virgin. He is speaking about the Cuba he left behind and his commitment to continue working on that, and he is also demanding that the regime give in, as it is for the benefit of millions of people."
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