The artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara stated this Saturday that building a better Cuba is a collective task that falls upon every Cuban, both on the island and abroad, in an interview with journalist Tania Costa published by CiberCuba just a week after his arrival in exile in Miami.
Otero Alcántara, released on July 8, 2026 after serving five years in prison imposed by the Cuban regime, used the example of an exiled Cuban nurse who works in the cleaning of a hotel where he was staying as a guiding thread for his reflection.
"You will return to Cuba as a different person. You will paint your little house, the façade of your home... in doing so, you will help make Cuba a little more beautiful, a little more prosperous," the activist told the woman, arguing that by hiring builders and spending their money, every Cuban who returns will activate an economic engine from the ground up.
For Otero Alcántara, that specific image encapsulates a broader truth: "It is the responsibility of everyone to make Cuba a better place."
But the activist did not remain in the optimism of the return. He was direct in pointing out that this future has an unnegotiable condition: "There has to be something radical that makes those beings who uphold the dictatorship disappear."
When the interviewer asked him if he thought that a popular mobilization like that of July 11, 2021 could be that radical change, Otero Alcántara replied without hesitation: "A demonstration on July 11 was something radical. I do, hopefully it would be people taking to the streets making the decision for themselves."
However, he acknowledged that there is a profound obstacle to this happening: the "civic illiteracy" that the regime itself has entrenched in Cuban society for decades.
"That level of civic illiteracy we have, that kind of civic infantilism we possess, because we are like children that the regime taught us all," he explained, adding a phrase that summarizes the extent of the problem: "Everything we know was taught to us by the regime. The jokes, the way we eat..."
This cultural and political dependence, according to Otero Alcántara, is not a flaw of the Cubans but rather the result of nearly seven decades of systematic indoctrination that must be consciously unlearned before a real transition can be possible.
In other parts of the same interview, the activist rejected the idea of waiting for a providential savior: "I do not believe that a powerful god is going to come down from the sky and send a lightning bolt. I believe in work." He also warned of the danger that, after the fall of the dictatorship, "another Fidel Castro" could emerge if the transition is not based on solid democratic institutions that transcend individual leaders.
Otero Alcántara arrived in Miami on July 18 following several days of being missing, which Amnesty International described as a "forced disappearance." The activist himself characterized his departure from Cuba as an expulsion: “I was expelled from Cuba”, making it clear that leaving the island was not a voluntary decision, but a condition imposed by the regime to regain his freedom.
His companion from the San Isidro Movement, rapper Maykel Osorbo, remains incarcerated with a nine-year sentence and rejected the regime's offer in May 2026 to exile himself in exchange for an early release from prison. Prisoners Defenders recorded 1,281 political prisoners in Cuba in May 2026, a figure that Otero Alcántara keeps very much in mind when discussing the urgency for change.
"If the dictatorship survives this decisive moment, it will be difficult because we will grow weary," warned the activist, who also called for support from the United States and Europe to accompany a transition that, unlike other processes in the region, must build institutions almost from scratch after decades of dictatorship.
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