Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara warned this week that hundreds of Cuban political prisoners remain completely anonymous while public debate is distracted by superficial aspects of their personal lives. He explained this in an interview with Tania Costa, in CiberCuba, this Saturday.
The activist and founder of the San Isidro Movement, who arrived in Miami on July 18 after serving five years in prison in Cuba, openly acknowledged that his high international visibility created conditions different from those of other inmates, although he clarified that this does not equate to privileged treatment.
In response to Costa's question about whether the international visibility and relevance of his imprisonment led to him receiving special treatment in prison, LMOA admitted it straightforwardly: "Of course, definitely," he stated.
Otero Alcántara pointed out that this difference in treatment has a dark side: those prisoners who are unknown to anyone pay a much higher price. "Right now, there are prisoners that no one knows exist. And they are suffering there at this very moment," he stated.
However, the activist explained that the Cuban regime does not distinguish between public figures and anonymous individuals when it comes to repression, but that invisibility exacerbates the suffering of those who have no one to defend them.
"They repress the people who are not on television. They repress the people who do not appear anywhere," he said, adding that "the victims who are currently suffering, whom no one knows, are experiencing repression at a heightened level."
To illustrate that visibility does not guarantee full protection, Otero Alcántara referred to two significant historical references: the execution of the poet Federico García Lorca in 1936 and the death of the dissident Cuban Oswaldo Payá in 2012, for which responsibility was attributed to the Cuban state by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2023.
"When they killed Lorca, he thought nothing would happen to him. And they killed him. These are mistakes that happen in a dictatorship, just like in Cuba when they killed Payá," he pointed out.
In that context, he harshly criticized that the public debate has focused on his physical appearance or a watch he wears, deeming those discussions a waste of time in the face of a massive human rights crisis.
"If you focus right now on Luis Manuel, on whether he's overweight, or on a watch, it's a story that only serves to waste time. When right now in Cuba there are more than a thousand political prisoners," he stated.
Regarding the watch in question, he explained that it is a gift with no significant economic value: "It cost 30 pesos and was given to me by someone who cared about me. They were expressing their affection, which is the saddest part—that this ultimately comes from a place of love."
Otero Alcántara linked this demand for austerity to an "anthropological damage" inherited from communism. "That thinking comes from communism, that all workers, everyone is equal, all of the proletariat. No, I do not aspire to a Cuba where we are all the same."
And he added: "I'm going to have to dress in rags with a tremendous level of hunger, a tremendous level of need, to prove that I'm a guy who can fight for the freedom of Cuba. Honestly, that's a lie, brother. It’s all in the head."
The figures support the urgency expressed by the activist: Prisoners Defenders documented 1,306 political prisoners in Cuba as of July 9, 2026, including 40 minors, with systematic reports of torture, isolation, and medical neglect.
This Monday, it was reported that a Cuban political prisoner has begun a hunger strike in protest of his confinement conditions, a case that concretely illustrates Otero Alcántara's denunciation of those who suffer in silence, unheard by anyone.
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